Americana: A South Park Fanfic
by Ben Barrett
Summary: After Kyle's suicide, Stan is left with nothing but questions. As he begins to talk to the people Kyle was closest to, Stan learns things about his childhood friend he never even guessed at. As he begins to piece together the shattered remnants of Kyle's past, he starts to wonder if he knew him at all. Historical fiction. Columbine massacre related. One-sided Style.
1. Chapter 1

**A Note From Ben: Wow, so it's been a really long time since I posted here. I doubt most people here even remember who I am. Most of my "fan base" have moved on to other things. Well, I should tell you that if you look at my story history, I have a lot of unfinished stories. This will not be one of them. I have most of this story written already, and will be posting it once a week on Sunday. I'm aiming to end the story on April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine massacre, but I'm not going to promise anything at this point. I may go longer than that. Only time will tell. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this story. I know some of the characters seem OOC, especially Butters, but I wrote it that way on purpose to show the evolution of the characters over time, so yeah. People grow, people change.**

* * *

**Americana: A South Park Fanfic  
**by Ben Barrett

_Finally, your final resting day  
__is without me.  
__I weep and think of brighter days.  
__What about me?  
_-End of the Line, _The Offspring_

_I saw my baby crying hard as babe could cry.  
__What could I do?  
__My baby's love had gone and left my baby blue.  
__Nobody knew.  
_-Magic Dance, _David Bowie_

**Dedication**

This story is dedicated with all my love in three ways. First, to the victims of mass killings everywhere and their families, including Columbine, Sandy Hook, Nine-Eleven, Virginia Tech, just to name a few. Secondly, to the students and faculty of Ranum High School in Westminster, CO, to whom I was very hateful, which ultimately led to my expulsion from said institution shortly after Columbine. This makes Columbine very personal for me. You all have my deepest heartfelt apologies. Third, and certainly not least, is my childhood friend Kyle L., who taught me what a friend should be.

**Chapter One**

On December 14, 2012, Kyle Broflovski killed himself. According to police reports and the autopsy reports, evidence showed that around 6:00PM on December 14, Mr. Broflovski entered his bathroom, poured his entire bottle of depression medication down his throat, and then walked into his room and stripped down naked. He turned on Offspring's album _Americana_, set it to repeat indefinitely, then laid down on his bed and fell asleep. He never woke up. He was found three days later when people who knew him began to get worried. He hadn't showed up for work nor had he been returning anyone's phone calls. His parents were called, who had keys to the apartment. They came quickly, but hesitated to open the door when they noticed the smell. It was the putrid odor of a decaying human body. The plan to enter the apartment was immediately put on hold until the police were called.

Sheila flipped out, of course. She wanted to go in and see her bubala, knowing immediately that he was dead, but the smell was bad enough to keep her outside. She fell to her knees and began crying so severely that she had to be sedated by emergency personnel. Gerald took her home and put her to bed, then began calling people who knew Kyle and sharing the bad news. He would later say that it was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. With each call, he would have to share the story all over again, of going to the apartment and finding Kyle's decaying body. It tore him apart, because it was like living through it over and over again. The ones hit hardest by the news were the Marshes, the McCormicks and the Stotches. Stan Marsh and Kyle were once like brothers, inseparable, connected at the hip. When the Broflovskis moved to Littleton in 1998, when Kyle was 16, that bond was broken. They tried to keep in touch via telephone and the occasional visit, but it just wasn't the same. Kyle was attending an urban high school and making plans for college and Stan was getting really serious with his girlfriend, Wendy Testaburger, who was occupying most of his time.

Kenny McCormick and Leopold "Butters" Stotch (who by this time had dropped "Butters" and was simply going by Leo) were also Kyle's friends, though not as close. Kenny was the one that everyone went to for a sympathetic ear. Kenny was the wise one, though his family was destitute. He could always be counted on for good advice or just a shoulder to cry on. When Kyle and his family moved away, Kenny was the one who stepped in and comforted both Kyle and Stan. He was often on the phone with Kyle, reassuring him, telling him that life was full of changes and one had to adapt or go insane. He also stuck close to Stan, who for a long time had a tough time coping without his Jewish brother from another mother. When Stan would get depressed, Kenny would take him out in his beaten up old Trans Am and show him a good time. Sometimes they'd go by Raisins, sometimes they'd go to the movies, and sometimes they'd just sit in the car at Stark's Pond, drinking beer they weren't old enough to possess and talking about the old days.

Butters was the "extra friend". He was often ridiculed or even abused by the other children and was unceremoniously labeled a "melvin" by Stan, a title that signified that he was below even the Dungeons and Dragons-playing nerds who sat in a dark corner of the cafeteria and debated subjects such as the benefits of using Improved Critical versus enchanting melee weapons with Keen. He was the lowest on the totem pole that one could get. As the kids grew older, Butters became more assertive and sociable. As a result, he grew closer to several people, including Kyle. Kyle had once told Butters that he was one of his best friends, something that Butters never forgot. When he found out that Kyle was dead, he walked out of his house, not bothering to tell his wife or kids where he was going. He drove down to Skeeter's and showed Skeeter his AA chip. He'd been sober for more than five years, but he knew that Skeeter would give him free drinks if he turned in his coin. Skeeter was dirty like that. He offered free drinks to those who chose his establishment to fall off the wagon, and the higher your chip the more drinks you received on the house. For example, the white twenty-four hour chip would only get you a cheap local beer. The six month blue chip would get you either six beers or six shots, depending on your preference. The bronze chip, which Butters was holding, would get you free drinks all night, or until you became so inebriated that Skeeter was required by law to cut you off. Butters felt no hesitation about handing over his chip to Skeeter and asking him to keep the drinks coming. It wasn't until he picked up his first beer, sitting before him ice cold and frothy, that he began to have second thoughts. He looked down into the amber liquid and saw Kyle's face there. Kyle was telling him to be strong, to not do the foolish thing he was thinking of doing. Kyle had been Butters' higher power in the program. Those entering AA are asked to put their faith in something, be it God, a friend, or the doorknob. Whatever kept you from drinking. Kyle had been his strength. He had stayed sober because he didn't want to see the disdain in Kyle's eyes when he saw him stumbling around disheveled and dirty. But Kyle had killed himself. Butters had lost his higher power, and now Kyle was telling him to be strong and not give up. Funny words to come from someone who had taken his own life. He put the glass to his lips and took a deep drink.

The one person who wasn't contacted about Kyle's death was Eric Cartman, who had moved away from South Park many years before. After dropping out of high school to take care of his sick mother, Cartman had worked a series of dead end jobs to try and pay his bills, but he couldn't keep one for more than a couple of months. Before long, all the employers in town knew what kind of person Cartman was and refused to hire him. Faced with the reality of going broke and becoming one of the homeless bums he despised so much, he packed up and moved to Phoenix, where he finally found stable work as a janitor in an elementary school. From the very beginning, he and Kyle had hated each other. Cartman tortured Kyle for being Jewish and Kyle despised him for it. No one thought that Cartman would even care that Kyle was dead. Besides, they hadn't spoken since 1998, when Kyle had moved away, so it was decided to just leave Cartman alone to live his own life.

When Stan found out that Kyle had killed himself, the first thing he did was drive to Kenny's house, which was quite nice. Kenny had studied hard in high school and had been accepted to CU Boulder, where he had studied computer technology. He pulled in a nice paycheck, so he lived in a fifty thousand dollar home on the outskirts of town, far from his childhood home in the ghetto. When Stan drove up, Kenny was already standing on his front porch, which ran the entire length of the front of his house. As Stan got out of the car and approached him, the first thing he noticed was that Kenny was holding a small silver Star of David on a chain. Inside the star was an embossed number three. Stan took off the one around his neck, identical except for the number, which was one. He held it out and stood there on the front walk, looking up at Kenny without speaking. Each member of their old group, except for Cartman, had one of these tokens. Kyle had had them made on their first day of high school. They had all heard the stories of how high school causes old friends to drift apart as priorities and responsibilities change. Kyle hadn't liked it and had spent his own life savings to have the necklaces made. He handed them out as they stood in the entryway of South Park High on their first day of classes.

"I don't want us to ever forget each other," he said. "This will ensure that we won't. Whenever we see them, it will remind us of our childhood days, the stuff we went through, the experiences we shared."

"I don't think there's any risk of us drifting apart, Kyle," Stan said. "We've been friends practically since the cradle."

"Nonetheless, I want you guys to wear these, just in case," Kyle replied. "If we never drift apart, great. If we do, though, we will always have these to remind us of the way things were. They will remind us of how we grew up, the people who meant the most to us, and where we came from."

Each member of the group received one. Cartman didn't get one because Kyle had no desire to remember him, nor did anyone else in their clique. Besides, he had purposely distanced himself from Kyle and his friends in seventh grade, telling them they were too immature and Jewish for him to be friends with them anymore. He had surrounded himself with thugs and bone breakers and greaseballs, and the group had let him go. He wasn't well liked anyway.

As time went by, the necklaces became not only a symbol of their friendship, but a way of communicating a message without words. None of them are sure who started it, but taking the necklace off and holding it out became a sign of respect. If something happened to a member of the group, the others would often take off their chains and hold them up to show support. Kenny's gesture was immediately recognizable by Stan. It was the same thing that the group had done when Stan's dad had died when Stan was fifteen. Stan had been at the funeral, crying over the casket and wishing he'd been closer to his father while he was alive. When he looked up, Kyle, Kenny and Butters were standing statue still behind the group of mourners, holding out their necklaces. Kenny standing on his front porch today, holding out his necklace, was a sign of respect for Kyle. Stan replied in kind, and as they stood there honoring Kyle, a thousand images flashed through his head. He could remember Kyle's smile, the sound of his laughter, the scent of his hair. All of those things were gone. He would never hear Kyle's voice again. The world suddenly seemed like a much darker place.

"I know why he did it," Stan told Kenny as he tried to fight back the tears.

"Do you?" Kenny replied.

"I do," Stan said. "I think you do, too."

"I don't know shit," Kenny said, lowering his necklace and glaring at Stan. "I don't know how you could possibly know anything either, unless you were talking with him in the days leading up to his suicide. If that's the case, I'd have to ask why you didn't report anything to anyone or take any action at all."

"It's not like that," Stan said, walking up the steps. "It's... complicated."

"Complicated?" Kenny spat. "What the fuck do you mean?"

"I think it would be better discussed indoors," Stan replied. "Mind if I come in?"

Kenny was silent for a moment, as if he was actually considering telling Stan no. Kenny had never denied any of his friends access to his home. In fact, Kenny was acting uncharacteristically angry, snapping at Stan and demanding answers. Stan understood why and didn't hold it against him. After all, Stan had just arrived at his house after their mutual best friend had killed himself, claiming to know things other people didn't know. Kenny would naturally be a little defensive about that.

"I suppose," Kenny said finally. He walked inside without another word, leaving Stan standing there on the steps. Stan took a moment to put his necklace back on, then followed. He found Kenny sitting in his living room, staring at the necklace and letting the chain run through his fingers again and again. When he saw Stan, he gestured to the seat across from him without a word and went back to messing with his chain. Stan settled in a big, overstuffed chair that made him feel small and sat there, watching Kenny.

"So spill it," Kenny said after several moments of awkward silence. "Tell me what you know that no one else knows."

"I don't think it's something that no one else knows," Stan said. "It's something that could be easily figured out by anyone who knew him if they just took the time to put the pieces together."

"I'm listening," Kenny said, laying his chain on the glass coffee table and giving Stan his full attention. "Why did Kyle kill himself?"

Instead of answering, Stan reached forward and grabbed the TV remote and switched on CNN. They were, of course, covering the story of the Sandy Hook Elementary killings. They were in the middle of a piece on Adam Lanza and his mental instability.

"Kyle killed himself the day this happened," Stan said. "His dad told me that when they found him, Offspring's album _Americana_ was playing on repeat. It had been playing when he died, and played nonstop for three days until the police found him."

"I see," Kenny said. "You think it was too much for him to handle? You think it brought back old memories?"

"Yes," Stan replied. "Remember how upset he was in 2007?"

"Boy, do I ever," Kenny answered.

In 2007, Seung-Hoi Cho massacred 32 students and faculty members on the Virginia Tech campus and wounded 17 others. Kyle had taken it hard. He started having nightmares and panic attacks. He called up Stan first and told him how he was feeling. Stan was surprised by this, because Kyle really didn't call anymore. Other than a brief exchange on birthdays and holidays, Stan and Kyle did not communicate verbally. Most of their correspondence was either through post cards or letters, and even those had become increasingly rare. When Kyle called Stan in 2007 and asked him for his help, Stan didn't know what to say. He went to Kyle's apartment, which was filthy and smelly. Kyle had slipped into a deep depression after seeing the massacre on the news and hadn't done any cleaning, either to his apartment or himself, in quite some time. Stan tried to get Kyle to snap out of it, but he wouldn't.

"Isn't it just awful, Stan?" Kyle had asked, sitting in a dirty chair with nothing on but a pair of dirty underpants. He was holding a small bottle of vodka in his hand, but he hadn't opened it yet.

"Kyle," Stan said. "I can certainly understand how you feel but-"

"Can you, Stan?" Kyle replied, not bothering to hide the bitterness in his voice. "Can you really put yourself in the shoes of someone in that situation? Do you know what it feels like to stare down the barrel of a gun? Have you looked up in the eyes of a killer and realized that your entire existence hangs in the balance, that everything you are could be obliterated if the fucking lunatic with the gun decides that killing you would be amusing for him?"

"No," Stan said. "I don't know what that feels like, but-"

"No, I didn't think so," Kyle said, reaching down and scratching his scrotum through his underwear without so much as a blink of shame. "Well I know what that feels like, Stan. I've been there. I stared into the face of death, saw my whole fucking stupid life flash before my eyes, and somehow walked away from it. That kind of thing never really leaves you."

He looked down at the unopened bottle in his hand, considered it for a moment, then untwisted the cap and took a long pull.

"Things like that never go away," he continued. "You go to some therapist, who tells you how fucking good you're doing, then he pumps you full of fucking drugs, which helps for a little while. But they don't erase the memories or the dreams. The memories are bad, they stay with me all the time, but the nightmares are somehow worse. Some nights I wake up screaming."

Stan said nothing. What could he say? There was nothing he could do to make this better for Kyle. All he could do was sit there and listen as his old friend vented.

"It never stops," Kyle continued after a long pull from the bottle. "There are times that I think I'm getting better, that I'm learning how to cope. The nightmares don't come as frequently, and the memories are a little less vivid. I begin to feel like a normal person who had a normal childhood. Then something like this happens and it's like tearing the wound open all over again. Every time a postal worker goes in to work and shoots everyone in the place, or when a student goes to school with a gun and opens fire on his classmates, I just can't handle it, ya know? It's like, I've thought about selling my TV so I won't have to watch crap like that on the news, but that wouldn't work because I'd just hear about it from someone. There is no escape."

"Kyle..." Stan said, but Kyle wasn't done.

"You know what the worst part about it is?" Kyle said with a cold and humorless laugh. He took another swig from the bottle. "When the whole thing started, I needed you. I needed my Super Best Friend more than I'd ever needed someone in my life. Sure, you called and checked up on me, but it wasn't the same. You weren't there to hold me or comfort me. You never even came by to see me. You were so busy with Wendy, and with getting that precious athletic scholarship, that you hardly had any time for me in my hour of need. It was like, even though my world was falling apart, you couldn't be bothered to do anything more than occasionally pick up the phone."

"I'm sorry," Stan replied. "I really am. I just-"

"Oh, spare me your apologies, Stan," Kyle spat. "It won't fix anything. No matter how many times you say 'I'm sorry', it won't change the fact that you weren't there. You were supposed to be my best friend, and you left me to the wolves. Kenny was more of a friend to me than you were. He actually came by my house once or twice to see how I was doing. He was there to catch my tears, to love me and help me cope with a constant waking nightmare. He did more than you, and you were supposed to be my brother, the person I would have done anything for. If the roles had been reversed, I would have packed a bag and would have been there with you every step of the way, until you could function on your own."

Stan felt like a heel. Kyle was right. He'd heard about the incident on the news, but had never really spared more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time to helping Kyle. Kyle, who had always been there for him, had been abandoned by the person he trusted the most. Stan should have done more. He should have cared more. He should have shown Kyle how much he meant to him. He hadn't done any of those things.

"I'm here now, though," Stan said. "I'm here for you if you need me."

Kyle softened a little at this.

"Yes," he said. "You _are_ here, I'll give you that. You're about eight years late, but you're here."

Over the course of the night, Kyle told Stan everything about what happened to him. The details were so vivid, Stan almost felt as though he was there himself. The more Kyle drank, the more he talked, and the more he talked the more he revealed. He said things that Stan swore he would never repeat to anyone, simply because they were so deeply personal. Some things Stan had already guessed at, but some caught him completely off-guard. When the bottle was finally empty, Kyle asked Stan to help him. Stan supported him as he made his way to the bathroom. He helped him take off his dirty underpants and climb into the shower. Stan bathed him, dressed him in the few clean clothes he could find, and put him to bed. As Kyle was laying there under the covers, Stan thought back on their elementary school days, when they were Super Best Friends and as close as two people could be without actually becoming lovers. He had to admit, he missed that bond. Perhaps it was this more than anything that caused him to lean down and kiss Kyle on the forehead. Kyle's eyes fluttered open and he looked up at Stan with a smile.

"Stay with me?" he asked. "I don't want to be alone tonight. I don't want to face the nightmares by myself."

"Of course," Stan replied. "I'm not going anywhere."

Kyle pulled back the blankets from the empty side of the bed and gestured for Stan to climb in. Stan hesitated for a moment, then kicked off his shoes and climbed in fully dressed. Kyle snuggled up against him and was almost instantly asleep. Stan put his arm around him and lay there in the dark, wondering if he was going to have to do this for the rest of his life. There would always be killings, and they always upset Kyle so much. Kyle had never married or had any children, so he didn't have many people he could turn to. Would Stan be coming to see Kyle when he was 70, holding his old shriveled body to keep the nightmares at bay?

Back in the present, Kenny was silent. He'd listened to everything Stan had said and had reached the conclusion that he was absolutely right. Kyle got unstable when he saw carnage like Sandy Hook, and this time was just one time too many. He had given up. He'd let the demons in his head beat him.

"I don't know why he didn't call me, though," Stan said. "I told him when I left his apartment a few days later, after I'd cleaned everything up and made sure he was stable, that he could call me anytime he was struggling. I told him I would be at his side in a minute. I even remember the exact words I said to him. I said, 'Super Best Friends are always there for each other. I wasn't there for you then, but I'm here for you now. Anytime, day or night.'"

"I think he was beyond helping," Kenny said. "I think he was fed up with being reminded of something he was trying to forget, and no matter how much he knew you'd try to help him, he just couldn't face his own past anymore. He couldn't take the torment."

"I loved him, Kenny," Stan said, feeling the tears well up in his eyes. "We were a lot closer after 2007 than we were before. We talked on the phone a lot, and I even made it a point to drop by and visit him a couple times a month. It was almost like it used to be before..."

Stan lapsed off, unable to finish. He didn't want to say it out loud. Kenny reached over and took his hand.

"It was almost like it used to be before Columbine," Kenny said.

"Yeah," Stan replied. "It was."


	2. Chapter 2

** Chapter Two**

Stan and Kenny talked about Kyle all afternoon. They spoke of his generosity, his kindness, and his firecracker personality. They would have continued talking about him for much longer, but around four o'clock, Stan received a phone call. It was Butters' wife. She hadn't seen him all day. He had disappeared right after he'd gotten the news about Kyle, and she was afraid of what he might be doing. She was afraid he was out drinking somewhere, but she didn't want to go looking for him because she didn't want to have her worst fears confirmed. Butters had gone through a long period of alcoholism, and it had almost destroyed their marriage. He would sit around the house in dirty clothes, drinking beer and watching reruns of Becker. She had been ready to take the kids and leave him when he'd promised to get sober. He had gotten down on his knees and begged her not to go. She had stayed with him on the condition that he sober up and never drink again. She didn't want to see him breaking his vow to her with her own eyes. She asked Stan to go find him.

"You wanna come along?" Stan asked Kenny after he'd filled him in on what was going on. "It sounds like Butters could really be in some serious trouble."

"Of course," Kenny said, picking up his necklace off the table. "He's a necklace brother. That means he's family."

They drove around South Park for a long time, looking for any sign of him. They started by checking the liquor stores and the parks. Back in his drinking days, Butters liked to get a cheap bottle of scotch and drink it in the park, usually in the dark when there were no families around. Naturally, this was the first place they checked. When that turned up nothing, they went to Skeeter's. Skeeter said he'd been there earlier drinking with his bronze AA chip, but he'd gotten irate when Skeeter had cut him off. He had called Skeeter a stupid fucknut asswipe and had stumbled out the door, three sheets to the wind.

"God damn, Skeeter," Kenny said. "You could have at least called someone to come pick him up or something. God only knows where he is now."

"It ain't my duty to babysit," Skeeter said, then turned his back on them and made a big production out of taking an already clean glass and wiping it out with a big white rag.

"Let's get out of here," Kenny told Stan.

They checked every place they could think of. They even checked the police station in the hopes that maybe he'd been arrested for public intoxication and had been put in the drunk tank for the night. No such luck. They finally found him down by Stark's Pond, sitting on an old log and looking out over the water. His eyes were red and puffy from crying and there was an empty bottle of Jim Beam on the ground next to him.

"Hello, Leo," Kenny said, sitting down next to him. "I see you've heard the news."

Despite the fact that he'd had a lot to drink, when Butters spoke his voice was crystal clear, as if he were completely sober.

"Kyle used to love this place," Butters said. "Remember how he used to come out here and sit for hours on end? He'd sit out here and ponder the big questions in life. I know that because I asked him once. Oh, yeah. I found him sitting here not long before he moved away to Littleton. A couple of weeks before, I think. I had come looking for him because his mom was looking for him, and Stan was busy with football practice. I sat down next to him and I said, 'Nice night, isn't it?' Of all the stupid things to say. He looked over at me and I'll never forget what he said. He said, 'I don't want to go to Columbine. I've got a bad feeling about that place.'"

"Like he had a premonition?" Kenny suggested.

"Exactly," Butters said. "He told me he'd been taken on a tour of the school, and out of nowhere the music from _DOOM_ started looping in his head. He didn't understand why that song would suddenly be in his head, seeing that he never played _DOOM_. He'd seen some of his friends playing it, but he had never gotten into it. That's what made it so strange for him to suddenly have one of the songs stuck in his head."

"That _is_ kind of strange," Stan said.

As it turns out, Kyle's premonition didn't stop there. He started out just hearing the music, but then it occurred to him that Columbine's layout would be ideal for a custom level. He knew a couple of guys who were into mods, and he thought that they would get a kick out of the place. It took him a couple of seconds to realize what he was thinking. He was thinking about a shooter game level designed to look like a school. There were suddenly images in his head of kids being shot, blood splattering, people screaming. Suddenly, the idea didn't seem like such a good one. He was actually a little creeped out by it and tried to focus on more positive things as the tour went on, but he couldn't get the image of a school massacre out of his head.

"It's crazy, Butters," Kyle said, picking up a stone and chunking it into the water. "I know it was just my imagination getting the better of me, but the pictures in my head were so _real_. I could almost smell the gunpowder and the blood. It was like, I don't know, something I'd never experienced before. I don't believe in seeing visions of the future or anything like that, but it seemed so real that I can't stop thinking about it."

"Maybe you're just paranoid," Butters said, and when Kyle shot him a glare he quickly went on. "I just mean that maybe the idea of you moving to a new town and going to a new school and making new friends is overpowering you. Maybe your mind is making things up because you want a reason to not go there. Right now, it seems like you'd take any reason at all to stay in South Park, and your imagination is providing you a reason."

"Yeah," Kyle replied, "that actually makes a lot of sense. I want to find something bad enough about the neighborhood or the school that will make my parents reconsider leaving, so I'm making things up in my head. You're a smart guy, Butters. You're a lot smarter than we used to give you credit for. I mean, we couldn't really see how smart you were because of how neurotic you were, but since you've gotten your confidence your intelligence is really shining through."

"I guess so," Butters replied. "I just figured out a long time ago that if I was ever going to stop being a doormat for guys like Eric Cartman, I was going to have to man up a little bit."

"Speaking of Cartman, have you seen him lately?"

"No," Butters said. "The last time I saw him was about three months ago. He had to drop out of school, you know."

"Really? Why?'

"His mother contracted AIDS," Butters explained. "She was always a dirty old bird, so it was no surprise when she got the disease after sharing a needle with some guy one night. It's taking her out fast. Cartman is working to pay for his mom's medication and also to pay for her astronomical medical bills."

"I see," Kyle said sadly. He was sorry to hear that Liane was dying. They'd often made fun of her as children because she was a notorious crack whore, but she was still one of the nicest people he'd ever met, so much different than her son. She was always ready with a snack when they'd come in from playing outside, and it was usually something awesome, like powdered donut pancake surprise. She went out of her way to help people when she could, which is one of the reasons Kyle suspected she doted upon her son as much as she did; she couldn't bear to tell someone no when they asked her for something.

Silence followed then. They sat there in the dark, watching the black water slowly shift and move with the direction of the wind. It wasn't an awkward type of silence, but rather an introspective silence. They were both thinking hard about things. Kyle was thinking about his move to Littleton and how many memories he had of this old mountain town. Butters was thinking of Stan, about what he was going to do when Kyle was gone. Butters was willing to step up and try and at least partially fill in the gap, but he knew whatever friendship he offered would never be sufficient. Stan and Kyle went together like peanut butter and jelly. When you tried to substitute the jelly, it never worked. Some people he'd met were fond of peanut butter and onion sandwiches. He'd tried it once and had hated it. In his opinion, the only thing that went perfect with peanut butter was jelly, just like the only person who perfected Stan was Kyle.

Butters pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it up. He hadn't been smoking long, or frequently. He only lit one up when he could get one, which wasn't easy due to his age. He wasn't really addicted to them, but he liked the way they tasted. When Kyle saw the cigarette, he scrunched up his nose in disgust.

"I can't believe you smoke those filthy things," Kyle said. "Do you realize what they do to your body?"

"I was thinking of sharing it with you," Butters replied. "I know it's not your thing, but maybe it will help you focus on something more than Littleton and your big move."

Butters offered it to him. Kyle looked at the burning Joe, completely unimpressed. When he made no attempt to take it, Butters pulled his hand back with a shrug and took a long drag. Kyle looked away, not wanting to see one of his closest friends poisoning himself.

"I'm going to miss this place so much," Kyle said after a moment.

"You mean Stark's Pond or South Park?"

"South Park."

"Funny," Butters said with a slight smile. "I was under the impression that you hated this place."

"What would make you think that?" Kyle asked.

"Mostly by the things you've said," Butters replied. "By the comments you often made while we were growing up and by your body language. You may not have realized how obvious you were being, but I saw it. You're just as disgusted by the rampant stupidity and random bullshit that happens in this town as I am. You aren't going to miss South Park. Not at all. It will actually be more like a breath of fresh air for you when you get to Littleton, because there won't be some ridiculous catastrophe destroying the town every other day. You might actually find it quite pleasant."

"If that's true," Kyle said, "then why do I feel like I'm about to make the biggest mistake of my life? Why is it that any time I think of moving to Littleton and going to Columbine High School I begin to feel as though a part of me is being ripped away from me, like I'm losing a piece of my very soul?"

"I can tell you why," Butters replied, "but I don't know if you're going to like the answer. I don't even know if it's my place to tell you. Maybe you should figure it out on your own."

"Tell me, Butters," Kyle said. "If you know so much, if you can tell me things about myself that I don't even know, if you're so all-seeing and all-knowing, then tell me why I feel this way. I give you full one hundred percent permission to burst my bubble and wake me up to whatever reality you seem to be attuned to that I am not."

Butters didn't reply right away. He took one last drag off of what was left of the cigarette, then flicked it into the pond. A fish, thinking it was some kind of insect, broke the surface and tried to swallow it. After tasting it and finding it less than appetizing, the fish spit it out. Butters watched this, thinking over Kyle's outburst. On one hand, Kyle had given him full permission to tell him what was so painfully obvious to everyone else, but on the other hand he really felt it was something that Kyle should discover for himself. Self-discovery and epiphanies and all that jazz.

"Are you going to say anything?" Kyle demanded after he failed to answer.

"Fine," Butters said with a sigh. "You don't want to leave because of Stan."

"Stan?" Kyle asked. "What's he got to do with anything? I mean, he's my best friend, but it's not like I can't cope without him."

"You still don't see it, do you?" Butters replied.

"See what?"

"Stan has become so much more than a best friend to you, Kyle," Butters explained. "More than a brother, even."

"I don't understand," Kyle said.

"I know you don't," Butters replied. "You don't understand because you don't _want_ to. Don't you see, Kyle? You don't just love Stan. You're _in love_ with him."

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it? Tell me, when was the last time you had a girlfriend? When was the last time you were even _interested _in a girl? You don't realize this simple truth about yourself, because you don't want to confront it, and I'm probably wrong for telling you, but it's obvious to me and everyone else who knows you. The only reason nothing has been said up to this point is because nobody wanted to ruin what you have with Stan. You guys are actually really cute together. He's as oblivious to your feelings as you are, so neither of you realize how deeply in love with him you are, which is adorable. To the rest of us, though, it's as clear as the nose on my face. It's the way you look at him, the way you treat him, the flirty way you bat your eyelashes at him when you want something. I don't even think you realize you're doing that, which makes it even more precious."

"And everyone has seen this but the two of us?" Kyle asked.

"Everyone," Butters said. "Even Cartman saw it, which is one of the many reasons he decided to distance himself from us. The two of you were making him uncomfortable."

"This is ridiculous," Kyle said, standing up. "I don't have to sit here and take this shit. If you think I'm going to sit here and listen to you tell me I have all these hidden homosexual feelings for my closest friend..."

"We don't have to talk about it," Butters said. "This is exactly why I wanted you to figure it out for yourself, because you won't believe it until you can see it for yourself, and you won't be able to see it for yourself until you stop lying to yourself and hiding from it."

"Shut up, Butters," Kyle said.

"Okay."

Kyle began to pace back and forth in front of the lake, trying to find a rational explanation for all of the things that Butters was pointing out to him, and for all of the things he was beginning to remember. The memories began flooding back in, vivid and rich in detail. He'd blocked a lot of it out or lied to himself about it until he actually believed the lie. Butters' revelation had been like the breaking of a dam. Like the mighty river roaring into the valley to obliterate the town below, things he'd done began racing through his head, things he hadn't even interpreted as gay when he'd done them. Things he'd just filed away as racing hormones, the onset of puberty and strange circumstances beyond his control. One memory that came back clearer than the others happened when he and Stan were both twelve. They'd been having one of their many sleepovers. Stan disappeared and returned with plunder from his dad's porn stash. They turned on the DVD version of Backdoor Sluts IX and watched the debauchery unfold before them. Kyle wasn't really aroused by it, but Stan was. Kyle could tell by the bulge in his pants. Before long, Stan began to rub at the bulge and then undid his pants and pulled out his little preteen prick.

"What are you doing, Stan?" Kyle had asked in shock.

"Oh hell, Kyle," Stan said, "you've seen me naked before. Besides, it's not like I'm doing something that you yourself haven't done before."

Kyle was taken aback by Stan's openness, his willingness to pull out his boyhood and jack it right there in front of him. Stan was a little bigger than he was, and he had a little tuft of pubic hair growing already, whereas Kyle only had a little peach fuzz. Kyle was suddenly harder than he'd ever been. He excused himself and ran to the downstairs bathroom, where he was sure Stan wouldn't be able to hear him. He locked the door behind him, dropped his pajama bottoms and began to masturbate fiercely. He felt his heat rise, then he came all over the bathroom floor, his first orgasm, and it almost brought him to his knees. As wave after wave of pleasure crashed over him, he moaned Stan's name again and again.

Kyle had never told anyone about that night, and this night would be no exception. He would not reveal to Butters the truth about what had been running through his head until September of 2001. Butters was with Kyle, trying to comfort him. The mass murder and the hijacking of the planes reminded Kyle of what happened at Columbine, and neither Stan nor Kenny had been available. It fell upon the one remaining necklace brother to come to his aid. When he'd arrived, Kyle was already wasted. There were several liquor bottles scattered around the living area, which was a big problem for Butters, who had not yet joined AA and was still trying to control his alcoholism on his own. He sat and listened as Kyle rambled, and Kyle had been quite open about things. He'd admitted to Butters that he'd been right all those years ago at Stark's Pond. He was as queer as a three dollar bill, and had been in love with Stan for a long time.

Butters suddenly stopped talking. Stan and Kenny sat on either side of him on the old log. Kenny had confiscated what was left of his booze and had poured it into the pond, ignoring Butters' indignant protests that he'd paid good money for it. Stan wasn't saying anything. He simply sat there, staring down at his feet. He'd just been fed a lot of stuff about his childhood best friend that he'd never known. It made him wonder just how well he'd known Kyle. How many other things had Kyle kept from him?

"Oh my God," Butters said, picking up on Stan's vibes. "You never knew, did you? Even after all these years, you didn't know that Kyle was in love with you."

"It really doesn't matter now, does it?" Stan said bitterly. He glared at Butters. "You'd think that someone would have shared that information with me, especially after what happened to him at Columbine that spring. You'd think one of you miserable bastards would have deemed me trustworthy enough to share something so important about my best friend with me. I mean, it wouldn't have changed anything between us, because I wasn't in love with him. I'm straight, man. Still, I should have been given the choice to talk to him about it, but apparently you guys made that choice for me. Apparently, I wasn't to be trusted with such information, and why? Did you think I was going to go apeshit on my best friend? Did you think I was going to hit him, insult him, tie him to a fence and beat him to death like Matthew Shepard?"

"It's not like that," Kenny said. "We just... well..."

"You can't even finish your excuse!" Stan snarled. "You can't come up with a justification for withholding information from me. Do you realize what you've done? Kyle had to live with this dark secret for years, maybe even his whole life. He never got to share it with me, and I never got a chance to show him how accepting I would have been of his feelings and his orientation."

"Stan," Butters said gently, trying to diffuse the situation, "Kyle made us promise not to tell you anything."

"What do you mean?" Stan asked. "Why would he do that?"

"Kyle was very particular about who he let know about his orientation," Kenny said. "He wasn't really out of the closet at any point in his life. He wasn't one of those people who would let everyone in the room know that he was gay. He felt it was a private issue, and no one's business but his own. He only told the two of us because Butters already knew it and he confided in me because I know how to keep a secret. He didn't want to tell you because he wanted you to figure it out on your own. He wanted you to reach the conclusion on your own, so it would be less of a shock to you. He didn't want to just spring it on you. He wanted you to get it in a way that would be most comfortable for you, through self-discovery."

"Besides," Butters added, "he didn't feel that telling you he was in love with you would serve much of a purpose, especially after you married Wendy. He knew you were off-limits then, and he respected your marriage vows enough to leave well enough alone."

Stan wasn't sure how to respond, or if he should respond at all. Butters had certainly given him a lot to think about. As he and Kenny helped Butters to the car, as they drove him to Kenny's house (because they weren't going to take him back to his wife in his condition), as they put him to bed and as Stan drove home to his own family, he thought over all of these new revelations. How had he missed it for all of those years? Was he completely oblivious, or had Kyle been really good at hiding it? Butters had said everyone had seen it but the two of them, so it was more likely to be the former than the latter. That made it an even harder pill to swallow. Butters had said Kyle hadn't seen it in himself because he didn't _want _to, but what was Stan's excuse? Was it the same thing? Had he not wanted to see his best friend as gay, so he had blocked out all the evidence?

When Stan got home, Wendy was already in bed asleep. He took off his clothes and climbed in next to her. Sleep did not come easy for him. He kept thinking about Kyle, dying all alone in his apartment and laying there for days before someone found him. He kept seeing his body, still on the bed as the sun rose, reached its zenith, then fell, multiple times while _Americana _blared to ears that could no longer hear it. It was a disturbing thought, and one that he could not get out of his head. The idea that one could die, not surrounded by friends and family saying their last goodbyes, but all alone and alone for days afterward. As time marches forward and the world moves on, your dead body lays in the place it fell, undiscovered and unnoticed.

That night, he dreamed of walking through the halls of Columbine High School. The lights were out, so it was dark, but not so dark that he couldn't see. The smell of gun smoke was heavy in the air, and in the distance there were gunshots and people screaming, mothers crying for their lost children and every now and then police on a bullhorn saying something. He couldn't make out what the police were saying because it sounded garbled, like a cassette tape being played backward. He could also hear Kyle calling for him, wailing his name, begging him to help him, but no matter where he looked, no matter which door he opened, no matter which hallway he went down, Kyle was nowhere to be seen. It was as if his voice was coming from all around him.

"Help me, Stan," he would say. "Don't let me die all alone."

Stan woke up screaming.

The day of the funeral was gray and overcast, and there was a light drizzle of rain. Because of the rampant decay of the body, Kyle was cremated instantly following the autopsy, so there was no body on display, no Kyle in a suit with his hands folded over his abdomen, looking as though he'd just fallen asleep. The funeral was actually more of a memorial service. Sheila brought the ashes home to the Broflovski residence in Littleton and everyone who knew him gathered and sat around the living room, eating hors d'oeuvres on little paper plates and sharing memories of him.

"I remember his first day of school," Sheila said, dabbing at her face with a handkerchief. She and Gerald were sitting on the love seat and he had his arm over her shoulders in what was supposed to be a comforting gesture. It didn't appear to be working. "When I drove him to the preschool, he was so scared. He said to me 'Mom, what if no one likes me?', which is funny because, as it turned out, everyone liked him. There were very few people in the world who didn't like Kyle. He was one of those people you just couldn't help but fall in love with. I loved him the first time I laid eyes on him, when they wrapped him in a blanket at the hospital and put him in my arms. I looked down into his precious little face and knew..."

Sheila could not go on. She began crying into Gerald's shoulder.

"Would anyone else like to share?" Gerald asked.

Stan waited to see if anyone else was going to say anything. There was an awkward silence in the room which was made even more so by Sheila's crying. Stan looked over at the urn containing Kyle's ashes. He couldn't believe how small it was. Everything Kyle was, everything he'd ever been, his spunk, his fiery attitude, his compassion, his love, was all reduced to a pile of ashes in a little container. It was the saddest thing Stan had ever seen. Kyle didn't even get the decency of a proper burial, a place where friends and family could come and pay their respects, tell him how much they missed him. This, more than anything, got him to his feet. He felt he needed to say something now while he had the chance.

"Kyle, was, um..." Stan said, then stopped. He cleared his throat and composed himself, then tried again. "Kyle was my best friend for a long time. When he and I were kids, we were closer than brothers. I would have done anything for him. I loved him so much. Even when we had stopped talking for a few years, you know, due to our lives going separate ways and all, I never stopped loving him. He was everything I ever wanted in a friend. He was understanding, he was generous and most importantly he was honest. He was never afraid to tell you what he thought. He was never the kind of guy who would just tell you what you wanted to hear. He'd tell you what you _needed_ to hear. That's what I think I'm gonna miss the most about him. I could always count on him to tell me when I was doing something stupid, and get me back on the right track."

There were several nods of agreement. Stan paused and looked over at the urn again. He felt the tears well up in his eyes and brushed them away with his shirt sleeve. When he looked back over at Kenny and Butters, they were giving him encouraging smiles.

"I've been finding out a lot of stuff about Kyle I never knew," he said. "There were things he never told me, things he should have. Things I would have wanted to know. I blame myself for a lot of that, for not seeing the outward signs and taking some action. I was oblivious. What I blame myself for most, though, is not being there for him after what happened at his high school. He needed me as a friend then, and I let him down. I wasn't there. If I had been, maybe he wouldn't have been as messed up as he was because of it. Maybe I could have, I don't know, helped to heal him or something. I guess I'll never know."

"It wasn't your fault, Stan," Kenny said. "You were busy and everything-"

"No, that's just it, Kenny!" Stan replied, cutting him off. "That's what I told everyone. As the years went by and people would ask me why I'd essentially cut myself off from Kyle, I would tell them, 'Oh, you know, it happens. Life gets busy and friends drift apart.' That's crap, though. You know why I stopped calling Kyle? Because I didn't know how to help him! He kept talking about how he was in the school that day, how he'd heard the gunshots coming closer and he'd ducked into a nearby classroom. He hid under the teacher's desk and prayed to Jehovah that the shooters wouldn't enter the room he was in. Apparently Jehovah didn't hear him, because that's exactly what one of them did. Kyle heard the door open, then he heard footsteps in the room. All of a sudden, Eric Harris' face was there, looking at him. He'd been found. Harris pointed his TEC-9 at him and said to him, 'Are you afraid to die?' Somehow, Kyle walked away from that. He said something about the other shooter calling out to Harris, telling him to hurry up, and that Harris just left him there. Kyle kept calling me afterward, expecting his Super Best Friend to have all the answers like always. He'd ask me why they did it in the first place, why they had let him live while all those other people had to die, and why Jehovah hadn't heard his prayer. I didn't have any answers to give him. So I started avoiding him."

"Stanley, nobody blames you," Sheila said. "You were seventeen years old. Of course something like that would be uncomfortable for you."

"But _I _blame me," Stan said. "I just... wish I'd done more."

He sat down, his head hanging, trying to fight back the sobs that were threatening to break free and overwhelm him. He couldn't let that happen. Not now.

Kenny stood up next. What he said next hit Stan like a punch to the gut.

"I remember talking to Kyle shortly after the Columbine thing," he said. "It was after Stan stopped taking his phone calls. I was sitting with him as he cried his heart out, wanting the nightmares to end and not knowing how to stop them. He said something to me then that I think Stan needs to hear. He said, 'Stan isn't taking my phone calls.' I told him I would talk to him, but that Stan was busy and all and just hadn't gotten around to it. He said, 'Stan isn't as busy as he pretends to be. He acts busy because what happened in the school that day makes him uncomfortable. He doesn't want to talk about it. But you know what, Kenny? It's okay. I forgive him.' He _knew_, Stan. He knew why you weren't talking to him, and he forgave you anyway, because he loved you."

This time, Stan could not stop himself from crying.

Kyle's ashes were taken to Stark's Pond, where they were to be scattered. Before this happened, however, Kenny pulled out a portable CD player boombox from his car. He placed it on the ground and put in a burned CD labeled simply "Maroon 5".

"Kyle trusted only one person with his final wishes, and that was me," Kenny said. "About a year or so ago, he called me over and gave me a list of instructions to follow in case something like this ever happened. The first on the list is this: he wanted this song played at his funeral, dedicated to Stan."

Kenny hit PLAY, and Adam Levine's voice began to ring out among the mourners in a slow rendition of "Lovely Day" by Bill Withers.

_When I wake up in the morning, love  
And the sunlight hurts my eyes  
And something without warning, love  
Bears heavy on my mind_

_Then I look at you_  
_And the world's alright with me_  
_Just one look at you_  
_And I know it's gonna be_  
_A lovely day_

Stan felt his heart breaking. Even in death, Kyle was still expressing his unending affection for him. He felt so unworthy. He didn't feel he deserved the love of someone like Kyle, who had loved him so unconditionally, because he had turned his back on that love and had left him in the darkness to fend for himself.

When the song was over, the ashes were scattered into Stark's Pond and the mourners began leaving. Stan continued to stand there with Kenny and Butters at his side. Several people walked up and shook his hand, and he returned each with a smile he didn't feel. When they were all gone, Stan walked to the water, where he could still see Kyle's ashes floating in the dying sunlight.

"Goodbye, old friend," he said. "I love you, too."

He kissed his hand and touched the water, then stood up and embraced both Kenny and Butters. They walked back to Kenny's car, not speaking, each caught up in their own memories of Kyle. It was for this very reason that they didn't see the lone figure standing behind a tree at a distance, watching everything that was going on. If they had, they might not have recognized him as he had lost so much weight. Even if they had seen him, they might not have realized that Eric Cartman had shown up to Kyle's funeral.


	3. Chapter 3

**A Note From Ben: Sorry I was late with this one. I had a few delays yesterday. Here is the next chapter, albeit about twenty-four hours late. I'll try not to let it happen again.**

**Chapter Three**

Stan was sitting in a diner that night, having a cup of coffee by himself and thinking of Kyle. Tomorrow, he had to do something he wasn't looking forward to. He had agreed to help Kyle's parents clean out Kyle's apartment. The bed that he had died on had already been removed, presumably by the police or the landlord, he didn't know which, and the place had been aired out to get rid of the smell. They still had to go and pack up Kyle's things and take care of his final affairs. Stan didn't want to go into the apartment where his closest friend had died and then decayed in, not at all. Still, the Broflovskis had been like family to him since before he could talk, so he couldn't really refuse them.

The bell above the restaurant door jingled as it opened, but Stan was sitting with his back to it and didn't turn to look. He was lost in his own little world. It was for this reason that he didn't know someone was walking up behind him until they were upon him, standing there silently and not speaking. He turned to look and at first did not recognize the person at all. His brown hair was cut short and was beginning to thin out, his too thin frame was draped all over with black leather, and his arms were covered with hideous tattoo sleeves. He would have been intimidating if he didn't look so sick. Then Stan looked into his eyes. Those eyes he had seen many times before, sometimes in his nightmares. They were yellow with disease now, but they hadn't lost that cunning gleam that said the mind behind them was capable of any kind of atrocity, no matter how inhuman.

"Hello, Cartman," Stan said. "Long time, no see."

"It's Eric now, if you don't mind," came the reply. "I stopped going by my last name a long time ago, after my mom died."

Cartman walked around the table and settled in to the open chair. He sat there with his arms crossed upon the tabletop and regarded Stan with what looked like an expression of pity.

"I'm sorry about Kyle," he said. "I know he meant a lot to you."

"Say what?" Stan replied. "That's a little out of character for you."

"Don't say shit like that like you fucking know me," Cartman replied. "You don't know half of the shit that I've been through the last decade or so. I've changed a lot man. I grew up."

He coughed into his hand then. It was a deep, hacking cough that lasted a long time. When he managed to get himself at least part way under control, he grabbed the pitcher of complimentary water and poured himself a glass, then took a deep drink and let out a sigh.

"Damn," he said. "Sorry about that. I'm not in the best of health these days."

"Why are you here?" Stan asked. "Your arrival seems awfully... convenient."

"Not even going to ask me what's wrong with me, huh?" Cartman replied. "Guess I deserve that after all of the things I did."

"What's wrong with you?"

"None of your fucking business," Cartman said, then laughed. This laughter led into another coughing fit, followed by another deep drink of water.

"Basically," Cartman said when he once again had control, "I wanted to come back to say goodbye to Kyle. I know I wasn't the best friend he ever had, and I certainly wouldn't have been welcome if I had shown up at the funeral, but I wanted to say goodbye in my own way. I wanted to make peace with him for all the torment I inflicted upon him."

"You _really_ don't sound like yourself," Stan replied. "Did you find Jesus or something?"

"Not really," Cartman said. "I just had a rude wake up call, that's all. All that shit I pulled, dressing up like Hitler and talking shit about minorities, was overlooked in a small town like this, but in a big city like Phoenix they beat your ass for talking like that. I took a lot of ass beatings before I finally realized one simple truth."

"What's that?"

"I realized that, though you can think whatever you want about whatever group you want, you really shouldn't verbalize those thoughts unless you want people to come after you. You should just live and let live."

"And you discovered this after just getting your ass beat? Kyle used to beat your ass all the time."

"It wasn't just that," Cartman said, dropping his gaze to the table. "They, uh, came to my house."

"Who did?"

"People from different minorities. Blacks, Mexicans, Jews, Asians; they all showed up at my house hurling bricks at my windows and screaming for all the neighborhood to hear what a piece of shit I was. They were screaming that they were going to burn my house down with me inside it. It was really upsetting mom, who was so sick at the time. She could barely get out of bed, and they were threatening to burn our house down and making a spectacle on the front lawn. She started crying. She said to me, 'Eric, you have to make some changes. You can't be like this anymore.' I saw how much danger I'd put my mom in and realized she was right. I walked out to the angry mob, took the beating I deserved, and never said another racist word to anybody."

"And you had a change of heart, just like that?" Stan asked.

"Not exactly," Cartman replied. "I just said I learned not to say what's on my mind. After I stopped taking shots at minorities, I actually made some pretty good friends who were... um, _not white_. They helped me get over some of it, but not all of it. It's kind of like that movie _American History X_, where that dude from the supremacist group goes to prison, then makes friends with some black people and realizes that they're people, too. It was after these changes happened, and some of them took years, I realized what a good friend Kyle had been to me. He took all the shit I threw at him and still let me hang out with him. He still tried to be my friend no matter what I called him or what I did to him."

"Yeah, Kyle had a big heart like that," Stan said with a smile. "He tried to see some good in everyone, and he was very forgiving."

"I spent a long time debating whether to call him and apologize," Cartman said. "I just didn't know how to approach him. After all, he almost died at the hands of some racist, angry, anti-Semitic nutjobs. How much would me calling him up affect him?"

The waitress came by and asked if they wanted anything other than Stan's cup of coffee. Stan asked that they keep the coffee coming and Cartman asked for a BLT and a glass of Coca-Cola. When she wandered off to get this, they continued their conversation.

"Did you ever get up the nerve to call him?"

Cartman dropped his gaze to the table once again and didn't answer right away. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out an old envelope, which he looked at for a moment before passing it to Stan.

"What's this?" Stan asked.

"It's a letter I wrote to Kyle but never mailed," Cartman said. "I thought about mailing it a thousand times, but could never bring myself to put a stamp on it and drop it in the mail. After so many years of carrying it around with me and reading it over and over again, it started to look rough as hell, so I just let it go. I didn't want to mail a letter that looked like that, and I certainly didn't want to rewrite it, because I was afraid I would make changes to it or try to censor myself or something. I didn't trust myself to copy the letter verbatim, so I just held on to it."

Stan opened the letter and began to read.

_Dear Kyle:_

_I know you probably weren't expecting to hear from me. On the list of people you were expecting to pop back up in your life, I'm probably right at the bottom, my name so close to the bottom edge of the paper that parts of it are missing. I deserve that. I was terrible to you when we were kids. I know nothing I will ever be able to say will justify any of the things I did, so I'm just going to say this: I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I treated you like garbage. You were always willing to give me the benefit of the doubt and forgive me no matter what I did, and I would always take your forgiveness and throw it back in your face with some other nonsense I'd concocted. That was wrong of me._

_Look, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I'm some kind of champion for racial harmony now or something, that I want to bring people of all colors together under a single banner and make the world a happier place. That's not me. That has never been me, and if I were to say something like that no one would believe me, even after all of these years. You can tone down your bigotry, but when it's ingrained in you as deeply as it is in me, there will always be a trace of it left. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. There are still times I'll be at the grocery store and I'll see a large black person or something and think, 'Man, that nigger is huge.' I'll probably never get past that._

_I have, however, gotten past my hatred of you. I don't know what it was about you that made me so mad when we were kids. I was obviously very conflicted, as I would torment you one minute and try to save you the next, as if I couldn't live without you no matter what I said about you. I have my theories on that, but I won't burden you with them. It probably wouldn't serve a purpose anyway. I just want you to know how deeply sorry I am for the way I was, the way I treated you, and the way I left things. I walked away from you and the rest of my friends without so much as a word. I just turned my back on all of you. I shouldn't have done that. You guys were always there for me. The friends I made after I walked away from you didn't give two shits about me._

_What I wanted to say more than anything else, though, is how much I miss you. I actually miss you a great deal. I even miss our bickering. Not when it got ugly and I started throwing your religion back in your face, but when it was just simple, everyday bickering. You'd say something, then I'd say something, then you'd get as red as your hair and tell me how stupid I was. I miss that more than you will ever know._

_I hope to see you again one day, if for no other reason than to make peace with you in person. Maybe I'll even get an opportunity to shake your hand. Maybe one day we could even be friends again. I'd like that._

_Take care of yourself, Jew._

_Sincerely,_

_Eric "Fat Ass" Cartman_

Stan was silent for a moment after he finished reading. He looked it over again and again, unable to believe his eyes. Eric Cartman, Eric Theodore Cartman, the kid who had tried to exterminate entire groups of people, who had talked about Hitler as if he were God, had actually written a very moving letter to Kyle, apologizing for his misdeeds. It was incredibly ironic. Like Steve Irwin killed by a stingray ironic. The great Crocodile Hunter had spent his entire career wrestling with alligators and crocodiles and other man-eating carnivores and had handled poisonous snakes and spiders as if they were puppies. After all of that, he had been killed by one of the most gentle creatures on the face of the planet. Stan had found that hella ironic, and this letter was on par with that. It just wasn't something you ever expected to see.

"I don't know what to say," he said after several moments. "I just... damn, man."

"It's nice, right?" Cartman replied.

"Yeah, it is," Stan said. "Why didn't you mail this?"

"Because it's almost _too_ nice," Cartman said. "I didn't think he would believe me, seeing as he didn't know what I've been through and wouldn't understand the context."

"What are you going to do with it now?"

"Oh, I'll probably keep it," Cartman replied, taking a small bite out of his sandwich. He seemed to be pacing himself, as if eating too fast would make him sick or something. "I'm probably going to be buried with that letter when the time comes."

"What do you mean 'when the time comes'?" Stan asked. "Why do you look so sick? You never told me."

"That's another reason I've been trying to make peace with my past," came the reply. "I only have a little time left myself, and I don't want to die with unfinished business. I want to be at peace when I go."

"You're dying?"

Cartman pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and threw them on the table.

"They aren't lying when they say these things fucking kill."

* * *

Stan was at home that night, sitting in his favorite chair. Wendy was watching some reality show and wasn't paying any attention to him, which left Stan alone with his thoughts. The two of them hadn't been blessed with children yet, so he had no little ones vying for his attention, either. They had tried several times. Stan had fucked her brains out trying to get her knocked up, had gone at it with her again and again until his manhood was sore and throbbing and still nothing. A trip to the doctor had revealed nothing wrong with her, but everything wrong with him. His sperm cell count was almost non-existent. Something to do with some high fever he'd had as a child that had fried his reproductive capabilities. They'd considered adopting, but simply didn't have the money or resources to do it.

Stan wasn't thinking about that, though. He was thinking about how rapidly his childhood was drying up. Not in the sense that it was passing him by, because he was long past that, but that people and places from his past were beginning to disappear. First his father, then Kyle, now Cartman. Cartman had told him the doctors didn't give him more than a few months to live, and that if he didn't take care of himself and his rampant COPD he might not even have that. Which explained the coughing fits. Stan thought it was stupid that the dumb asshole still carried around a pack of cigarettes, like COPD and inoperable cancer weren't bad enough. He was going to smoke some more? Stan wished he was a young child again, standing at the bus stop with his friends, who were all alive and well, waiting for Miss Crabtree to pull up and tell them to sit down and shut the hell up. Even Miss Crabtree was dead now.

Stan sighed and got up. He walked out into his back yard and sat down on the steps of the stone patio. He wondered what he was going to find at Kyle's apartment tomorrow. Kyle had obviously been a closet homosexual from what everyone had been telling him. Would he find strange sex toys, like rubber dicks and riding crops and motor oil? This seemed kind of far-fetched, so out of character for Kyle, but Stan didn't know what his old friend's bedroom habits had been. Had he entertained gentlemen callers, or had he been living a celibate life, longing for the one person in the world he wanted and could not have?

_Easy, Marsh,_ Stan thought. _You're going from one extreme to the other. One minute you're thinking about him being some kind of sexual freak, the next minute he's abstaining from all sex because he can't have sex with you. As if your ego needed a good stroking. He was probably somewhere in between, having an occasional sexual romp without becoming an absolute man-whore._

Why the hell was he even thinking about this in the first place? What difference did it make who Kyle was fucking, if he was fucking anyone at all? That was really none of his business, even now that Kyle was dead. He just couldn't help thinking about it. Now that all of this business about Kyle being in love with him had come to light, the thought of Kyle with anyone in a lover's embrace, him moaning their name as they pushed into him again and again... actually made him kind of jealous. He had to be honest with himself about that. He was fucking jealous of whoever had been with Kyle.

_Why? Why should that be? I was never in love with Kyle. I'm happily married. I have a beautiful wife, a beautiful home, and a great job. Why should it suddenly matter to me that Kyle might have gone looking for the company of someone else?_

Because it did. It mattered a whole helluva lot. He didn't know if he was going crazy or what. Was the grief combined with these sudden revelations making his brain malfunction? He should be focusing on more important things, like getting Kyle's apartment cleaned out and moving on with his life, but he suddenly didn't want to. He didn't want to move on. He wanted to know details about Kyle's personal life. Since everyone had deemed it necessary to inform him that Kyle had been a homosexual, why did they leave out other information? He was more confused about Kyle than he had ever been, and there was nothing he could do about it at this point but stew on it. Kyle didn't have the ability to come back like Kenny did, he couldn't send him messages from beyond the grave, and he wasn't going to be sent back as his guardian angel or some shit. Kyle was gone, and dwelling on aspects of Kyle's life that he wasn't a part of was not going to change that, or help him deal with the situation any better.

Wendy walked out then. She came up behind him and started rubbing his shoulders. Most of the time this made him feel better; tonight, it was just obnoxious.

"What's wrong, Stan?" she asked. "You've been awfully quiet tonight."

"Just got a lot on my mind, babe," he said. "Been thinking about Kyle a lot."

"Anything you want to share with me?"

Oh, yeah. He could see that conversation going well. _Well, you see, Wendy, I've been kind of obsessing over who Kyle had in his bedroom. The idea of him fucking someone else is driving me crazy._ She wouldn't misinterpret _that_ or anything.

"Not really," he said. "Just personal stuff. You know he and I were best friends for a long time. He meant a great deal to me."

"And you meant a great deal to him," Wendy said. "You two were like soul mates or something."

"Soul mates," Stan replied. "Isn't your soul mate usually your wife or husband?"

"Not necessarily," she said. "Sometimes your soul mate can be a brother or a sister or a really close friend. It doesn't have to be the person you marry."

Soul mates. He didn't know what he thought of that. On one hand, it sounded like a wonderful thing to think of Kyle as such an integral part of him that they were connected at their very souls. It would explain why the two of them had always been so close as children, and why they were able to rekindle that closeness as if nothing had happened after not speaking for several years. On the other hand... well, Stan didn't want to think about what being a soul mate with Kyle might mean for him. Did that mean they were destined to be together, and that Stan had somehow messed that up by marrying Wendy? Or was he over thinking this thing? Because he had certainly never had any interest in being Kyle's lover... at least, not until today, when it seemed to be all he could think about.

He looked up, but Wendy had gone back inside. He had apparently been lost in his own thoughts for so long that she had given up and gone back to her television programs. Fuck it. He needed to be going inside himself. He had a big day tomorrow of packing up Kyle's stuff and doing... whatever the Broflovskis were planning to do with it. He didn't want to face that on a lack of sleep, and it was already going on ten. He thought what he needed right now to take his mind of off everything was a good nightcap and to make love to his wife. After he got a little alcohol in him and put a little of himself in Wendy, things would seem a lot clearer to him.

* * *

The next day, things were not clearer for him. Despite taking _two _drinks before going to bed, and despite making love to Wendy until she had moaned his name and left scratch marks on his back, he still did not feel any less confused. He stood outside the apartment complex where Kyle had lived in the last two or three years of his life, waiting for the others to arrive. He was expecting Kyle's family as well as Kenny and Butters. He did not leave his car until he saw them pull up, as he did not want to go upstairs and wait by the apartment door. The less time he had to spend there, the better he'd feel about it.

Butters and Kenny showed up first in Kenny's car. Butters had been staying with Kenny, remaining sober as a schoolmarm and waiting for his wife to decide if she wanted him to come home or if she was going to file for divorce. They all made small talk there in the parking lot as they waited for the Broflovskis to arrive. Stan mentioned seeing Cartman, which surprised his friends, though he did not tell them that Cartman was dying. Kyle's parents arrived in a U-Haul truck before he could really get the chance.

"I guess we should make it clear what's going on," Sheila said to the three of them as they stood there in the early morning light. "We're going to pack up Kyle's personal effects, like his possessions, his dishes, things like that. We are not going to be saving any of his furniture. Those things will be donated. If you find anything you want to keep that reminds you of Kyle, let me know and I'll probably give it to you. I know you boys well enough to know that you are aware of this, but please don't just take something. If you want it, let me know first."

Stan didn't think he was going to be taking anything out of this apartment. It was weird enough just coming here. He didn't want anything to remind him of the grisly way his friend had died.

They went upstairs and Sheila used her key to unlock the door. The windows were open to let fresh air in and the curtains were moving gently with the breeze. It was still December, so either the water had been turned off to keep the pipes from freezing or the management had closed the windows at night and had come up here this morning before their arrival and opened them again. The apartment itself was not complicated. To the left was the living room with a simple set of matching furniture, all white, and to the right was an alcove that held the kitchen. Down the hallway was the bathroom, the bedroom where Kyle had died, and two spare rooms. One of these rooms Kyle had used for an office and the other as an extra bedroom in case he ever had company. Stan wondered who, if anyone, had ever used that spare bedroom. He supposed that if Ike had ever come over to visit, he might have used it, but he couldn't think of anyone else.

The Broflovskis started in the kitchen, packing up dishes and cleaning out the refrigerator. Kenny offered to take the bedroom where Kyle had died and Stan and Butters went to work cleaning out the office. There were a lot of papers here, Kyle's computer and office equipment, and a filing cabinet, but not much in the way of personal effects. On the desk was a picture of Stan, and Stan picked it up and looked at it. It was the last photo Stan had ever given him. He had offered it to him the day Kyle and his family had moved to Littleton. The two of them had stood behind the moving van, hugging and crying and promising to keep in touch. Stan had given Kyle this photograph that day. He couldn't believe that he had not only kept it all these years, but that it was framed and sitting in his office.

"Kyle..." Stan said softly, feeling the tears in his eyes again.

Butters picked up on what was happening and ran to get Kenny. They were both back in seconds, ready to help him. Seeing them brought him back to reality. He cleared his throat, wiped his eyes and put the picture in a box.

"I'm fine, guys, really," he said. "Come on, we've got work to do."

Butters and Kenny shared a worried look, but did as he asked. Kenny went back to Kyle's room and Butters went back to packing. Stan worked like a mad man, giving the items he was picking up only a cursory glance to verify which container they went in, then moving on. Within an hour and a half, all they had left was Kyle's desk to disassemble. The rest of the room was empty. The desk wasn't expensive. It looked as thought it had come straight from Walmart, one of those build-by-the-numbers pieces that was made mostly of particle board and would break easily. That meant that it would be easy to break down and remove. Stan was about to suggest they do this when Sheila called them for lunch.

"Shit," Stan said.

"Don't worry, Stan, it's not going anywhere," Kenny said, back in the doorway. "Let's go get some food and we can finish up a little later. You look like you need a break anyway. You look like you're on the verge of..."

Kenny lapsed into silence and simply shook his head. He walked off toward the front of the apartment with Butters at his heels, leaving Stan standing there. Stan looked back at the empty desk, felt a wave of sadness wash over him as he realized that Kyle would never sit there again, and tried to ignore it as he walked away. It wouldn't do any good for any of them if he lost it now.

Lunch consisted of cold Burger King sandwiches that Sheila had purchased the night before. Instead of simply making bologna and cheese, she had ordered a bag full of Whoppers. They took turns heating them up in Kyle's microwave, then sat there trying to make some kind of conversation as they ate. It wasn't working. They were sitting in Kyle's apartment, surrounded on all sides by things that reminded them of him. Conversation really wasn't possible. They eventually just gave up and chewed their food in silence.

After lunch, Sheila and Gerald went to run a couple of errands and get out of the apartment for a little bit, leaving Stan, Kenny and Butters there alone. When they were gone, Kenny turned to Stan.

"I've got something in the back that I think you need to see," he said.

"Kenny, I really don't want to go into Kyle's room," Stan said. "I'll go anywhere else in this apartment. Just don't ask me to go in there."

"Fair enough," Kenny replied. "Wait here."

Kenny retreated into the back and came back a few moments later with a very thick book with a nondescript cover.

"What is that?" Stan asked.

"Kyle's journal," Kenny replied. "I was leafing through it briefly and..."

"You read Kyle's journal?" Stan exclaimed, angry.

"Stan," Kenny said, "Kyle is dead. I know it hurts for you to hear that, but it's true. Me reading this book will not only no longer hurt him, but it provides insight into who he was far better than Butters or I could ever begin to tell you. I think you should read it."

"No, absolutely not," Stan said, shaking his head and backing away from the book as if it were going to explode. "I would never..."

"Tell me, Stan," Kenny replied, "how long have you been fighting with yourself over Kyle's homosexuality?"

"What?"

"Oh, don't even pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about. It's written all over your face. You've had this look about you like you've never been more confused in your life, and Wendy called this morning to tell us that you were being really unusual last night."

"Shut up, Kenny."

"I think you're struggling not only with the idea that Kyle was gay, but that you might have had feelings for him you never even knew you had."

"No."

"I think..."

"SHUT UP, KENNY!" Stan shouted, and his voice reverberated off the walls. "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

The sudden silence in the room was almost deafening, and the tension was so thick that Butters actually backed up a few steps, as if he was afraid things were going to get ugly.

"All right, Stan," Kenny said finally. "I'll shut up. I won't even press the issue with you anymore, but I really think you need to read this book."

Stan looked at Kyle's journal like he was going to get the plague from it, then turned and ran from the apartment like he was on fire. He heard Kenny calling for him to come back, but he ignored him. He ran to his car, jumped in and pulled out of the parking lot, screeching his tires and leaving black smoke behind him as he went.


	4. Chapter 4

**A Note From Ben: Sorry if this one is a little shorter than normal. I got to where this chapter ends and felt everything that needed to be said at this point had been said, and I came up a little short. I'll try not to make a habit of it.**

**Chapter Four**

Stan did not go home when he left the apartments, nor did he go anywhere anyone would think to look for him, because he didn't want to see Kenny or Butters. Instead, he went to a run-down cheap motel on Colfax Avenue in Denver and knocked on a red door that looked so old it might have been made from the original cross that our Lord and Savior was crucified on. There were footsteps, someone peeked out the curtains, then all was silent. Stan sighed. He didn't need this shit right now. He gave him the fucking address and told Stan he was welcome to visit. If he was gonna dodge him like this...

The lock slid back and the door opened. Cartman stood there, looking somehow worse than the last time Stan had seen him.

"Problems at Casa Broflovski?" he asked with a smirk. There was a lit cigarette between his fingers and he took a long drag and blew the smoke in Stan's face.

"Fuck you, Cartman," Stan said. "Are you gonna be my friend or are you gonna be the Cartman I remember?"

"Fuck off, dude, I was just playing with you," Cartman said, "and I told you not to call me by my fucking last name. Get the fuck in the room before someone gets the wrong idea and thinks you're a male prostitute."

Stan walked in, making sure to mad dog Cartman all the way. The room itself was quite organized and neat. Of course, Cartman had never been particularly messy in the first place, but this was almost immaculate. His amazement must have shown on his face, because Cartman turned to him and said:

"I keep my shit pretty spic and span. I don't know if it really helps, but I keep things pretty sterile around me because I heard people sometimes last a little longer in well-maintained and tidy settings. I don't even know if that shit is true, but hey, it couldn't hurt to try it, right?"

"I guess so," Stan said, sitting down on the bed. Cartman settled into a large armchair across from him.

"So tell me what happened," Cartman said.

"It was really hard for me to be there, Eric," Stan said. "Everything there was a reminder of who Kyle was, what his tastes were, how he lived his life. We were taking that stuff down and packing it in boxes. It felt like boxing up Kyle's entire life and packing it up somewhere to be forgotten. Then Kenny pulled that shit with the journal and-"

"Wait, wait, wait," Cartman said, holding up a hand. "What's this about a journal?"

"Kenny wanted me to read Kyle's journal," Stan replied. "I can't do that to him. I can't invade his privacy like that, even now that he's gone."

"Uh huh."

"What the fuck do you mean 'uh huh'?" Stan shot back.

"Stan," Cartman said, steepling his fingers under his nose, "did you really come here to feed me a line of bullshit, or is that all that comes out of your mouth these days?"

"Excuse me?" Stan growled.

"Well, it's just that, you keep prattling on about Kyle's life being packed away in boxes. Here Kenny is, offering you something that will keep Kyle's life intact for you. It's something that would be so personally _him_. It's his deepest thoughts, his secret wishes, his desires. Kyle's essence is captured in the pages of that book. You bitch about Kyle's life being boxed up and forgotten, yet you turn down the most vivid part of his life like it's something offensive. Now, I know that you're probably confused right now, seeing you just found out he was gay, and gay for you, so it's messing with your head. I think you actually believe the crap that's coming out of your mouth, and that's bad. You're the worst kind of liar: the kind who doesn't realize he's doing it."

There was stunned silence for a long time from Stan, then he cracked his neck and did a Voldemort-like twist of the head. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths before he spoke again.

"You fucking disease-riddled piece of shit," he said in a frighteningly calm voice. "It's taking a great deal for me to maintain this level of control, because if you weren't being eaten alive from the inside out by your own body and I wasn't afraid of killing you, I would beat the ever-loving _shit_ out of you."

"Oh, don't even play that card with me, Stan," Cartman retorted, not intimidated in the least. "It's fucking true. You aren't avoiding reading Kyle's journal because you respect his fucking privacy. That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard. You don't want to read it because you're suddenly aware of what was painfully obvious to the rest of us, that Kyle had a boner for you, and you don't want to read it because you're afraid he might have said something about you. I guarantee you he did, Stan. He fucking _did_. He was fucking obsessed with you. Your name is probably on every fucking page. _Oh, I love Stan so much. Oh, how I wish I could be with Stan. Oh, what an orgasm I just had jacking it and fantasizing about Stan sucking my dick. _Or maybe he liked it the other way. Maybe he liked to fantasize about sucking _your _dick. But you know what? You need to fucking read it anyway, because you owe Kyle that much. As his closest friend, if you turn down the opportunity to get to know Kyle that intimately through what is essentially a record of Kyle's life, you'll be proving what a selfish and undeserving prick you are."

"I might fucking hit you anyway, and consequences be damned," Stan said.

"If you do, make sure it's hard enough to fucking kill me," Cartman replied. "As much pain as I'm in, killing me would be like doing me a favor, but don't fucking hit me just hard enough that I end up in the hospital for a while. That will fucking piss me off."

"You're a fucking dick," Stan said, "but you make sense. You're right, Eric. I am a selfish and undeserving prick, okay? I did Kyle so wrong. I never deserved the amount of love and devotion he gave me. I didn't deserve it then and I certainly don't deserve it now."

"You got that right," Cartman said. "I've been keeping an eye on you and the Jew through my contacts in South Park over the years. Just because I wasn't there didn't mean I didn't have eyes and ears everywhere. I heard about how you bailed on him after Columbine. That was a pretty shitty thing to do. I can't say I would have been nearly as forgiving as Kyle was. When I heard about that, I lost pretty much every bit of the deep respect I had for you. But you know what? You can still do what's right. You can read his journal, get to know him, and find out all that stuff that happened to him after you bailed on him. Things you would have known about had you stuck with him. He deserves for you to at least read about it."

Stan didn't say anything. He simply stood up, grabbed his coat, and headed toward the door.

"Where are you going, Stan?"

"I guess I'm gonna go and get this fucking journal," Stan said, opening the door and squinting against the sunshine suddenly in his eyes. "I hope you're all _fucking_ happy. You all want me to read this, knowing it will emotionally tear me up beyond all hope. Fine. I'll fucking do it. But I'm gonna go on the record and say one thing."

"I'm listening."

"I thought this was a bad idea."

"Duly noted. Now get out."

* * *

Stan arrived home two hours later and went to his room, Kyle's journal under his arm. He didn't say a word to Wendy, which was happening more and more frequently. Once in the privacy of his own sanctum, he looked at it. He ran his finger over the faux-leather cover and then flipped it open. The front page said: PROPERTY OF KYLE BROFLOVSKI. TO BE GIVEN TO STAN MARSH UPON MY DEATH. So he had planned for this all along. Surely Kenny had known. He said he'd looked through the book himself. Why didn't he just tell him that Kyle had bequeathed it to him? Was it because he wanted Stan to take the book of his own accord, without feeling obligated to do it? If that was his master plan, he had failed miserably on that.

He flipped to the first entry. It was dated two weeks before Kyle moved away to Littleton. He didn't know if there were journals that predated this one or if Kyle had started recording his life near the end of high school. He figured it probably didn't matter much. This was the one that Kyle had requested he get, so there was something important in here he was supposed to find. The others, if there were any, were unimportant.

The first entry said this:

_Two days ago I talked with Butters. We were sitting out by Stark's Pond together and he basically told me I have a raging clue for my best friend. I didn't want to believe him at first. He sounded like he was talking nonsense. Then I started remembering all of this stuff. I remembered seeing Stan playing with himself, and running into the bathroom and having a fantasy about Stan, if you get what I mean. It's really hard for me to ignore that. And that's not the only thing I remember._

_ Sigh. It was when Stan and I were in ninth grade. It was the holiday break and we were fourteen years old. It was freezing cold outside, so to get out of the weather and warm up, we went down to the rec center, where they have a heated pool. We played in the water for a bit, then we went back to the locker room to shower and change clothes. As we were both standing there naked in the communal shower, I started staring at his body. I couldn't help it. It was like I couldn't take my eyes off of him because he was just _so_ beautiful. He caught me staring and gave me a funny look. He said "What? A glimpse is free, but if you're getting a whole peep show, I'm gonna have to charge you." I have never been more embarrassed in my life. I got out of the shower as quick as I could and couldn't look him in the eyes for two weeks, at least._

_ That was years ago, and he seems to have forgotten about it because things are better between us than they've ever been. There's no awkwardness or anything._

_ Which brings me to what I really want to say. If you couldn't tell by the things I just said, Butters was right. I've been thinking about it nonstop for the past forty-eight hours and I realize that he's right. I'm at the very least bisexual and head over heels in love with my best friend. I'm not going to tell him, though. For one thing, I'm not ready for anyone to know about this just yet. If anyone is going to find out about how I am, it's not going to be for a long time. Besides, what purpose would it serve? He's so madly in love with Wendy and I don't want to try and come between them. Also, I'm moving away in two weeks. It doesn't make sense to even bring it up. It's best to let Stan live in the dark for another two weeks and then I'll be down the road and no longer a constant fixture in his life. Who knows? Maybe the time apart will take care of these amorous longings._

_Only time will tell._

_-K_

Stan felt like a heel. He had all but forgotten about the incident in the shower. He certainly hadn't intended to come across the way he had, nor had he ever had any indication that Kyle had interpreted his words that way. He was giving Kyle a hard time, just joshing with him, because who hasn't taken a look before? If Kyle had only known then that Stan wasn't trying to be a dick to him, maybe he could have realized his sexual identity a lot earlier. Maybe by a year or more. Maybe they would have even had an opportunity to sit down and talk about it. Now, that would never be.

He felt himself starting to lose control and slammed the book closed. He tossed it into the corner and threw himself face-down on the bed. He didn't know how he was going to get through this. That was just the first entry, and he already didn't want to see any more. He never should have agreed to do this. It was stupid of him. And that fucking _look_ on Kenny's face when Stan had come over and asked for the book. That happy, beaming, _I'm-so-proud-of-you_ expression. He would have liked to have slapped it off of his face. Then, to make matters worse, he had to open his mouth and rub it in.

"I think you're making the right choice, Stan," Kenny said. "It won't be easy to read, but it will totally be worth it. I guarantee, by the time you get to the end, you'll know Kyle better than anyone."

"Kenny?"

"Yeah, Stan?"

"Shut the hell up."

"Sure, Stan."

Stan had left then, and had not stopped to say goodbye to anyone, not even the Broflovskis. On the way home, with the journal on the passenger seat beside him, it had almost felt like Kyle was in the car. It was very surreal. At one point, he thought he saw Kyle actually sitting there beside him, but only in his peripheral vision. When he looked over, there was no one there. The experience had shaken him pretty bad, even though he knew it was probably just his imagination.

He stayed there on the bed, face-down in his pillow, for what seemed like hours. Eventually, he fell asleep and dreamed of driving down the road. Kyle was riding shotgun, but he was a rotting corpse. When Stan looked over at him, he gave Stan a toothy smile (because his lips had long since shriveled up) and chuckled.

"Hello, Stan," dead Kyle said. "You and I are going to get to know each other quite well. We're going to find out things about each other that no one else knows!"

He reached for Stan, and his skin was completely eaten away in some places, leaving the bone of the fingers exposed. In addition, his fingernails were black. Stan screamed as the rotting hand closed down over his face. He jumped up with a shout, not sure where he was for a moment. He looked around. Wendy was sitting by the bed, reading from Kyle's journal. This made Stan furious. How dare she go into Kyle's private thoughts uninvited!

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he asked.

"I could ask you the same question," she said, glaring at him. She closed the book and put it on the nightstand. "That's not just some book from the discount bin at the thrift store, you know. That's fucking Kyle's deepest thoughts, thoughts he wanted _you_ to see. For you to just casually toss it into the corner like that, as easily as you'd toss a pair of dirty socks or a cheeseburger wrapper or something, was extremely disrespectful. It's a vile, disgusting thing to do."

Stan couldn't meet her gaze. He knew she was right, but he didn't want to admit it. Stan had a bit of a proud streak. Besides, she didn't know how hard reading that book was for him. She could cut him a little fucking slack, and he told her as much.

"Cut you some slack, Stan?" she snapped. "You want me to cut you some fucking slack? Okay, how about this: I won't say anything else to you tonight, because you obviously aren't listening to me anyway, but if I ever see you treat Kyle's journal with as much disrespect as you did tonight, you'll be packing your clothes and going somewhere else for awhile, because I won't want to be around you for a long time."

"Really?" he replied. "You're gonna go there? You'd ask me to move out over some book? I mean, I realize the book has special significance, and it's Kyle's personality recorded on paper and all that jazz, but at the end of the day it's still just a book. You would really ask me to move out over that?"

"You still don't get it, do you?" she cried. Her voice was going up in volume, but so was his. "Kyle was your fucking best friend. You meant everything to him. I didn't even have to read his journal to know how he felt about you. He was pretty obvious. Every bit of that love is recorded on those pages. For you to take that love and toss it into the corner as carelessly as you'd toss away a Kleenex you'd jizzed into is nothing short of unspeakable. Did you feel any kind of affection for him at all? Did you even give a shit? Because it sure seems like you didn't."

"How fucking dare you, Wendy!" Stan replied. He was shouting now. "He was everything to me. He was like my brother, the yin to my yang, my soul mate. I would have done anything for him. Absolutely anything! I would have died for him!"

"Yet, you left him when he needed you the most!" she barked. "What does that really say about you, Stan? Listen to this..."

She grabbed the journal off the table and flipped about thirty pages in and began to read.

_Stan hasn't called me in weeks. When I call him, he's always conveniently not home. He's always out somewhere doing something, or seeing somebody, or some other variation of the same excuse. It always amounts to the same thing: Stan isn't coming to the phone. That's okay. I know what this is all about. He doesn't feel comfortable talking about what happened at Columbine. Maybe I expected too much of him. Maybe he doesn't have any answers to the questions I'm asking, so he's avoiding me to avoid the questions. That sounds about right. I mean, it still sucks that he's abandoning me like this. I trusted him to always be there for me, and he's kind of broken that trust, but I don't think I can really hold a grudge against him._

_ Yes, you heard that right. I'm forgiving him. I shouldn't. I have every right to be mad at him, to throw a fit and tell him what a prick he is, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to leave him be. It isn't fair of me to make him uncomfortable with my personal issues. If he doesn't want to talk about it, we'll never discuss it again._

_ G-d, just thinking about what happened has me flipping out. I remember looking up into the crazy eyes of Eric Harris as he pointed his gun at me. I am everything he hated. I am Jewish, and I'm gay. Wow, I still feel kind of funny writing that. But anyway, he said to me 'Are you afraid to die?' and the weirdest thing happened. A verse from the Bible popped into my head. I know I'm Jewish and we only read the Old Testament, but I've actually read the New Testament in great detail, so I know little bits and pieces of it. One of the verses came to my mind as I was looking up into those evil eyes and thinking that he was going to shoot me at any second. It was:_

_And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts,  
__And I looked and behold: a pale horse.  
__And his name, that sat on him, was Death.  
__And Hell followed with him._

_ Why the hell would I suddenly think of that? Do you know how much that fucked my head up? I started shaking. I wanted to face my death with dignity, but my own body betrayed me. I started shaking like crazy. Suddenly, Klebold was in the doorway. He said "Hurry the fuck up" and Harris looked down at me, as if he was debating whether he had time to pull the trigger and blow my head back. Then he just turned around and left, as if I was boring him or something. What the fuck? I needed Stan after that. I needed him more than I've ever needed him, or anyone else, in my life. I wanted my brother, and he wasn't there. My heart is broken._

_-K_

When Wendy stopped reading, she closed the book and looked at Stan. Stan wished he could just sink through the bed into the floor. He felt like an insect.

"He loved you," Wendy said. "Shame on you."


	5. Chapter 5

**A Note From Ben: Sorry. This is really going to piss you off.**

**Chapter Five**

The next day found Stan sitting in a chair in a secluded corner of the South Park Library, Kyle's journal on his lap. Everyone kept telling him he needed to read it, and after his argument with Wendy last night he had realized that he couldn't keep flipping out every time he read something that upset him. If he did that he would never get through it. He needed to bite the bullet and keep his emotions in check, at least long enough to get a substantial amount of reading done. The problem was, Kyle's personality was on every page. Every word, every punctuation mark and ink blot, reminded him of the friend he'd left high and dry for so long. It hurt so bad to think about.

He took a deep breath and opened to an entry dated a couple of years after Stan had abandoned him.

_I can't believe what just happened. I don't know what it means, or if it means anything at all. It just happened, and my mind is still trying to process it._

_It started with the nightmares again. I saw something on television, some documentary they were doing on Columbine. Seeing the faces of the two shooters again made me go absolutely batshit crazy. I mean, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think straight. I started having flashbacks. I knew better than to call Stan, because Stan stopped taking my phone calls a long time ago. I tried to call Butters but he was out somewhere with his wife. That only left Kenny. Reliable old Kenny. I knew I could count on him to come, and he did._

_When he came to the door, I was shaking so bad I could barely stand. Kenny put his arm over my shoulders and led me to the couch, where he held me against him and told me that it was all going to be okay. I started crying. I told him I couldn't handle the memories or the nightmares anymore, that the medication I was on wasn't helping. I told him the only other solution I could think of was to check myself into an asylum and have them use electroshock therapy on me until my brain was a fried, smoking pile of goo. Kinda like what happened to Jack Nicholson's character on _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

"_That's crazy talk," Kenny said. "You don't have to do anything as drastic as that."_

"_But the memories never go away, Kenny!" I said. "It's been years ago now. Harris and Klebold are dried up skeletons laying in unmarked graves somewhere, I guess, but they still haunt me every day. It's like they're living in my head, torturing me day in and day out. Even though they didn't shoot me that day, I still feel like they got me."_

"_I know, Kyle," Kenny said._

"_No, you don't," I said. "No one does! Nobody understands what I'm going through. I feel so alone, so helpless."_

"_Hey, now," Kenny replied. "I know a little about what you're feeling. You don't think I relive my deaths every now and then? Getting blasted, cut in half, hit with airplanes, run over, cooked, eaten; you think I ever get used to that? It hurts like a sonofabitch, and sometimes I wake up at night in a cold sweat because I had a dream about being hacked up with a chainsaw or something. I had to learn a long time ago that death is just something that comes for us all from time to time, and sometimes it gets so close that death breathes right in our faces, only to give us a reprieve and allow us to live for another day. Instead of reliving that close call again and again, try and focus on the positive."_

"_What positive could there possibly be in all of this?"_

"_Well," Kenny said, "you're alive. Thirteen other people weren't so lucky that day."_

_I couldn't deny that he had a point, but it didn't make me feel any better. I kept seeing the faces of those kids who died, a couple of whom I had actually talked to once or twice. Their smiles frozen forever on teenage faces that would never grow any older made me want to scream. Their photos were like accusations: we died and you didn't. What makes you so special? No matter how hard I try to tell them that I am just as baffled as they are, they never listen. They just keep smiling. Smiling. SMILING! G-d, it makes me want to tear my hair out._

_I didn't tell Kenny any of this, though. I just shook my head and leaned against him. His arm around me was so nice. I felt for the first time like I had a protector, like there was someone there to keep the demons away. He did something then that I never thought I would see Kenny do, nor was it something I ever thought I would go along with. He pulled out a joint. A fucking joint. I couldn't believe my eyes._

"_Is that what I think it is?" I asked._

"_Grade A Jamaican grass," Kenny said. "I know you don't normally partake, and I don't either, but I figured you could use something to put your mind at ease. I hit up Stan's uncle Jimbo before I came over here. He keeps a little tucked away, and when I told him it was for you, he couldn't say no."_

"_I don't know, Kenny," I said._

"_Look, you've tried everything else," he said. "What could it hurt? It might help you to forget for a little while."_

_I could see where he was coming from. It took me a little to get the mechanics of it down, but soon I felt like I was floating. I felt so free from my worries. I wasn't thinking about Columbine for the first time in years, and it felt great. Kenny and I were laughing and cutting up and telling jokes. We talked about the old days growing up, about Butters and Stan and Cartman. We were having such a good time that what happened next is almost inexplicable. I don't know if it was the THC, my lightened mood, or the fact that Kenny had helped me so much, but I looked over and caught his eyes. Suddenly we both stopped and stared at each other. This lasted for a couple of seconds, then before I knew it our arms were around each other and we were kissing with such passion I knew what was going to happen next. Clothes went flying, bodies were explored by hungry hands, and then I was on top of him._

_I'm still not sure why we did it. Kenny never struck me as gay, and I've never been attracted to him before. I guess I just felt so overwhelmed by gratitude and affection for the guy that I lost control. I remember feeling him inside me, and it was the first time for me. I was a virgin until tonight. It was uncomfortable for me at first, but Kenny was a gentle lover. He made sure to never put his needs before mine, and to make sure whatever pain happened to come was minimal and short-lived. He made my first time so amazing. I remember moaning and sighing, begging him not to stop. _

_Then I messed up. I was so caught up in the moment, just seconds from climax, when I moaned Stan's name._

"_What did you say?" Kenny said from under me. He instantly went flacid and came out of me. The look on his face made me feel so fucking vile. He looked hurt, betrayed, used. His lip started to quiver. "I'm not Stan, I'm Kenny."_

"_Kenny, I'm sorry," I said._

_He got up and started putting his clothes on. I begged him to stay and not go. I told him over and over that I was sorry, that I didn't mean it. I must have looked quite the sight, naked as the day I was born and pleading for Kenny to stay with me. He sighed and looked at me._

"_I should have known better," he said._

"_What do you mean?" I asked._

"_It's still Stan," he said. "It's always been Stan. You could never love me, because Stan is all you ever think about. He's all you've ever thought about."_

"_Kenny," I said, "have you been in love with me?"_

"_It doesn't matter," he said. He finished getting dressed and got up. He grabbed his car keys and walked toward the door. He took one last look back at me and said: "You know, I never turned my back on you. I've always been there. I've always given you everything. It's still not enough for you. No matter what I do, you still pine away over Stan. You know he's married and you say you will respect his marriage vows enough to not pursue him or disrupt his life, yet you still sit here and long for him. As if that makes you some kind of romantic martyr or something. As if that's so fucking noble. Here I am in front of you, Kyle, a flesh and blood person, willing to give you everything you ever wanted, to hold you in the night to keep your bad dreams away and do my best to make you happy, but I'm not good enough, because I'm not fucking Stan. Enjoy your solitude."_

_He walked out then and slammed the door. What the hell did I do?_

Stan finished reading and at first couldn't process it. He just sat there, the book open on his lap. He was making some kind of guttural gargling sound in the back of his throat, though he didn't realize he was doing it. His eye began to twitch. A little girl who was walking by him at the time caught one glimpse of him and went running in the other direction.

_That son of a bitch._

He gave a roar of rage and jumped to his feet. He was seeing red when he jumped in his car and took off like a man possessed.

* * *

Kenny was standing with Butters at Shakey's Pizza when there was the roar of an engine and a squeal of tires. A minute later, the door crashed open and a very irate Stan came charging in. He caught sight of Kenny and came at him like a mad gorilla. Before Kenny could get a word out, Stan caught him with a right hook and set him flying backward.

"What the _fuck, _Stan?" he cried getting to his feet.

"You son of a fucking bitch!" Stan roared, getting in his face. "You fucking _slept_ with Kyle?"

"What fucking difference does it make to you anyway?" Kenny barked. "You've got a fucking wife, Stan! Kyle had no one, and neither do I. Why is it such a fucking issue for you for Kyle to be with someone who isn't you? Are you _that_ fucking self-centered that you-"

Stan took another swing at him, but Kenny dodged it and countered with a punch to Stan's midsection. This only enraged him, and before he knew it, he and Kenny were in an all-out brawl. Kenny punched Stan and sent him tumbling back into the salad bar. Stan grabbed a metal bowl of salad mix and smashed Kenny in the head with it. Kenny stumbled back and Stan nailed him with a football tackle. They went crashing into a table, which broke under their weight. Stan grabbed one of the broken table legs and started beating Kenny with it. Butters tried to get a hold on him and restrain him, but Stan elbowed him in the face and broke his nose. Kenny lost control when he saw that and grabbed Stan's legs. He flipped him in a wrestling hold and laid him out on his back.

"Stop it, Stan!" he screamed. His eye was swollen and he was bleeding from a lacerated scalp and several gashes on his face. "You fucking prick! How fucking selfish are you, you cocksucker? Were you really so against Kyle being happy with someone? Some friend you were. I'm glad Kyle isn't here to see you acting this way today. He'd be so ashamed of you."

He spit on him and walked away. Stan's rage was beginning to abate, enough that he no longer wanted to fight with Kenny. He knew Kenny had been right, that he had been out of line to approach the situation this way. What the hell had he expected? Had he expected Kyle to remain chaste? Was he really that bad a person? He had Wendy at home. He should have been happy that Kyle had had a moment of happiness in the darkness of his life after high school. Instead, he was here brawling with his friends like some kind of barbarian.

The police booked him on charges of aggravated assault, battery, destruction of private property, disorderly conduct, trespassing, and had considered charging him with attempted murder. His bail was astronomical, and he wasn't surprised when no one came to get him out. It was two days before anyone came to see him, and it was Wendy. She looked at him through the glass, and the expression on her face was one of pity, not anger.

"How are you, babe?" he asked.

"Don't make small talk with me, Stan," she said. She was crying, and dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. "I'm here to tell you something."

"What?" he asked.

"I'm leaving you," she said. "When you get out of here, whenever that is, you will find all of my things gone. I'm sorry."

"Why?" he cried. "What did I do?"

"Oh, Stan," she said. "You were never really in love with me. Your heart has always belonged to Kyle. I suspected as much from the beginning, but was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. When you asked me to marry you, I thought maybe your feelings for him were finally in the past. But they weren't. You don't know this, but there are times when you were sleeping that you would moan Kyle's name under your breath."

"Wendy..."

"No, Stan!" she exclaimed. "Let me finish."

"Please..."

"There were so many times I cried myself to sleep, because I didn't think my husband really loved me. On some level you did, sure, but not romantically. You always loved Kyle. Always. When this thing with Kenny happened, I couldn't take it anymore. I just can't be playing second fiddle to a dead man, Stan. The fact that you attacked Kenny because he has a romantic history with Kyle shows who your heart will always belong to."

"Wendy, please!"

"Goodbye, Stan."

She hung up the phone, took one last look at him, then ran out crying.

Stan's bail was posted two days later. When he stepped out of the jailhouse, he was surprised to see Kenny standing there waiting for him. He still looked rough, but he was healing. Butters had a protective guard supporting his broken nose and was looking at Stan like he was some kind of maniac. Kenny turned and whispered something in his ear. He nodded and climbed into the back of the car, where he sat not looking at Stan.

"What are you doing here?" Stan asked.

"Um, yeah," Kenny replied. "I just posted your bail. You're welcome."

"Thanks," Stan said, not looking at him. "I guess I owe you one."

"You owe Butters one, too," Kenny said. "After the police hauled you off, he drove your car back to your house to keep it from being impounded."

"I would thank him, but it doesn't seem like he wants to talk to me."

"Can you blame him?"

"Guess not."

"Look, Stan," Kenny said, "I know you have a lot of confusing thoughts running through your head right now, so I'm willing to let bygones be bygones. I even had the charges I filed against you dropped and convinced Butters to do likewise. You still have the charges from Shakey's, and I'm pretty sure you'll never be allowed there again, but those charges are so minor they'll probably only get you a slap on the wrist. A couple of years probation, if that, and you walk free."

Stan said nothing.

"I will tell you this, though," Kenny said. "You really need to get yourself together. Figure out what's going in that head of yours. Did you love Kyle or didn't you? I think we both know the answer to that question, but you're simply denying it."

He opened the driver's side door of his car, reached in and pulled out Kyle's journal. He offered it to Stan.

"Take it. Finish it."

"Kenny..."

"Just do it, Stan," Kenny said. "You'll be glad you did."

Stan took the journal once again and looked down at it. How many more secrets were hidden within its pages? How many more times would Stan feel himself ripped apart by Kyle's words? Kenny seemed to sense what he was thinking and put a supportive hand on his shoulder.

"It'll be okay," he said. "Come on, I'll drive you home."

The entire trip to Stan's house was spent in silence. The only sound in the car, other than the purr of the engine, was Butters breathing through his mouth and trying not to be too loud about it. Stan felt bad, because he knew that Butters only had to breathe through his mouth because it wasn't possible for him to breathe through his broken, restricted nose. That was his fault. He thought about turning around and apologizing to Butters, but decided it would be better to wait for another day. Whenever Stan caught Butters' reflection in the rear view mirror, he always had a frightened and untrusting look in his eyes.

When they dropped Stan off at his house, he found it as devoid of Wendy's presence as she had promised. Everything that would remind him of her had been taken, even their wedding photos. He sat down in his chair and cried. He bawled into his hands, unable to take anymore. He couldn't believe he'd lost his wife. He couldn't understand the thoughts going through his head. He didn't want to think about Kyle anymore. It all overwhelmed him and he sat there in the silence of the empty house and sobbed. In the midst of this, he looked down at Kyle's journal sitting on his lap. He flipped it open and began to read again.

_Kenny came back again. I didn't think I would ever see him after what happened between us before, but he's always been very forgiving. I told him that I hadn't meant to disrespect him the way I had, nor had I been having some fantasy about Stan while he was giving it to me. I had always known it was Kenny making love to me, and I hadn't tried to diminish that by pretending he was someone else._

"_I know, Kyle," Kenny said. "I believe you. I don't think you meant to do what you did. It was just the desires of your own heart coming out."_

"_I guess so," I said. "It's not that I don't care about you, or that you were a bad lover or anything. I just have so many issues."_

"_No, you don't," Kenny replied. "You have the Columbine thing, sure, but aside from that you only have one real issue: Stan. You never told him how you feel. You never gave him the opportunity to decide for himself if he had any feelings for you."_

"_He doesn't, Kenny."_

"_Yes, he does."_

"_He does?"_

"_Absolutely," Kenny replied. "Even though he's cut ties with you, he hasn't forgotten about you, nor has he lost any of his feelings for you. Maybe he doesn't realize that he has them, but he does. I talk to Wendy all the time. Wendy says he carries a photo of you in his wallet to this day, and that he sometimes asks out of the blue, 'I wonder how Kyle's doing?' She encourages him to call you and find out for himself, but he always finds some excuse."_

"_I didn't know that," I said._

"_Look, I'm not mad at you for what happened between us," Kenny said. "Not even a little bit. What irritates me more than anything is the fact that the two of you are living these two completely separate lives, trying to put on this show. You pretend like you're trying to get over him when you're clearly not. He's trying to pretend like he has no feelings for you when he clearly does. He took the charade so far that he actually got married to show the world how straight he is."_

"_Well, I don't know what you expect me to do about it," I replied. "He might not be married for the right reasons, but he's still married. G-d knows I'm not going to be the one to break up a happy marriage for my own benefit."_

"_Happy?" Kenny scoffed. "You think they're happy? They might have good sex from time to time, but they're as far from happy as you can get. Stan comes home, has dinner and sits in his chair. Wendy sits and watches TV or reads a book while he goofs around on his laptop and drinks beer. They hardly speak to each other."_

"_Yeah, but-"_

"_You know what Wendy said to me the other day, Kyle? I caught her in the supermarket and she told me, 'Stan is so miserable all of the time. He's either staring at that stupid picture in his wallet or saying something about Kyle or talking in his sleep about Kyle. Sometimes I wish that Kyle would just show up and they'd end this stupid game they're playing. I wouldn't even be mad if Stan left me. I'd actually be happy for him that he's with the person he loves the most.'"_

"_I find it hard to believe that a married woman would tell someone that her husband would leave her for another man," I said._

"_You've got to understand where she's coming from," Kenny told me. "She's in a loveless marriage. She's watched her husband sit in his chair and mope for years. Stan means as much to her as Stan means to you, and just like you were willing to leave Stan alone to marry the person you thought he loved, she is willing to let him go if it means not having to watch him suffer anymore. It's like the old saying goes, 'If you love something, set it free.'"_

_I thought about what Kenny told me all day. It was about four or so when I got in my car and drove down to South Park. I drove up to Stan's house and parked on the street. I sat there debating with myself whether to go up and knock on the door. How would Stan take my reappearance in his life? How would he take my declaration of unending love for him? I was so afraid. In the end, I couldn't do it. I saw Wendy come out of the house. She looked over and saw me sitting there. She walked up to the car and I rolled my window down. She said, "I was wondering when I was going to see you. Stan's been waiting a long time for you, whether he knows it or not." I didn't know what else to do, so I floored the gas pedal and pulled out of there as fast as I could. I could see Wendy in the rear view mirror getting smaller and smaller, but that look on her face was always crystal clear: utter sadness and disappointment._

Stan couldn't believe how close Kyle had come to walking back into his life at this point. He had been close enough to talk to his wife. He'd sat outside, looked at his house, had probably noticed how meticulously Stan took care of his lawn. It was all so surreal. Had Kyle been just yards away from him, psyching himself up to confess his deepest, most intimate desires? Wendy had never said a word about it.

That was something that was really starting to piss him off. People kept keeping things from him, expecting him to figure it out on his own. A little honesty and openness goes a long fucking way, and he'd never been the kind of guy who would disrespect someone for being honest with him. Why the fuck couldn't people just tell him what was going on? If it was so painfully obvious to everyone but him that he was in love with Kyle and that Kyle was in love with him, why hadn't anyone taken the necessary steps to get them together? Why all the mystery and guessing games?

It didn't seem fair. Everyone said he was in love with Kyle. Well, it was too late for him to be with Kyle now, regardless of how he felt. Add to that steaming shitheap the fact that his wife had just walked out on him and his best friends were trying to distance themselves from him. He had no one. Absolutely no one. He suddenly understood what Kyle had felt for all those years without him.

He flipped through the book, but Kyle had apparently stopped recording his life after this entry, though he gave no explanation why. The rest of the pages were blank. The only other entry was at the very back of the book and it was dated the night he died: December 14, 2012.

_Stan:_

_I know this book is going to end up in your hands soon, and you're going to have a lot of questions but no answers. Join the club, my friend._

_I want you to know I don't hold it against you for denying yourself all these years. You've played the part of the heterosexual extremely well. You even convinced a lot of people. The only people you didn't convince were the people who knew you. People like Wendy._

_Look, I don't have a lot of time to devote to this. The whole Sandy Hook thing has been all over the television today, and I feel the darkness creeping in again. I'm starting to have flashbacks and I know the nightmares will be bad. I can't live through that again. Therefore, I'm going to tell you what I've got to say and then I'm going to end it._

_I loved you so much during my life. You have no idea. You were absolutely everything to me. I would have done anything for you and given anything for you. There was nothing I wouldn't have done. If it were asked of me and it were possible to do it, I would rip my still-beating heart from my chest if it meant keeping you from getting hurt. I think that's why I took off that day outside your house instead of coming inside and confessing how I felt for you. It only would have confused you and destroyed something you really thought you wanted (your marriage with Wendy), and I was not willing to do that to you. I honestly don't know which was the lesser of two evils. Was it leaving you in a miserable, loveless marriage with Wendy or would it have been revealing the depth of my heart? You know what ultimately made my decision for me? Heterosexual marriage is sacred to G-d, and no matter what Kenny might have said about Wendy wanting us to be together, I'm not about to break up something that G-d has sanctified. I know that sounds awfully religious, but that's the way it is._

_That doesn't change the fact that I would have crossed heaven and earth for you. I would have died for you. I wish things could have been different between us. I wish I had gotten to you before Wendy. If Wendy had never been in the picture, maybe the two of us could have been a lot happier. I guess we'll never know._

_I'm about to go take my pills. Before I do, though, I want you to know that I hope to see you in heaven some day. My idea of heaven is the world we lived in when we were kids. We were so carefree, so innocent, so pure back then. Those days were the best of my life. I think it would be great to live in those days for eternity. I hope that's what's in store for me. I hope all those stories about gays and suicides burning in hell aren't true. I hope God shows me enough mercy to give me a little peace. Believe me, I've lived through hell here on earth._

_I love you, Stan. I always have and I always will._

_Your Super Best Friend Forever,_

_Kyle_

Stan looked down at the suicide note, Kyle's final words to him, and suddenly found himself completely numb. He couldn't feel anything. How could he have been so blind? Kyle had loved him so much, and he had been oblivious to everything. Kyle had gone to his grave with his heart beating Stan's name. He had lost out on an opportunity to be with someone who had loved him unconditionally, without question or ulterior motive. Kyle had simply loved him because of who he was, because of what they'd meant to each other as children. That Stan had not only denied that love his whole life, but had left such a wonderful person to suffer on his own was more than Stan could bear. He'd known before how wrong he'd been to abandon Kyle, but it was in this moment the enormity of his error came crashing down upon him. It was so much worse than he'd ever even fathomed.

So this was who Stan Marsh really was. A guy who beat up his two best friends, left the person who loved him the most to die, and married a woman who deserved better simply to prove to himself that he was heterosexual. He was repulsed by this self-discovery, and found himself walking slowly up the stairs toward his bedroom. He made his way to the nightstand, where he always kept his father's pistol. He looked down at it momentarily. It all made so much sense now. He had bad-mouthed Cartman for all these years because of the things he'd done, but how was he any better? In a lot of ways, he was worse. Cartman at least let you know he hated you. Stan had made the wrong choices at every turn. He had hurt people, stabbed friends in the back, and ultimately had destroyed every relationship in his life that had ever meant anything to him.

_You're a piece of shit, Marsh._

"Forgive me, Kyle. Love you."

He put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. His last thought before the bullet ripped through his brain and silenced his thoughts forever was how beautiful Kyle's eyes had been.

* * *

**The epilogue will be up next week. Hope you stick around. I promise you won't be disappointed.**


	6. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

_Nine months later_

Wendy was screaming and sweating, begging them to get the fucking thing out of her. Before Stan had died, he had done something miraculous. He had managed to get her pregnant. Although his sperm cell count had been almost non-existent, what little he did have had somehow managed to beat all the odds and reach her ovaries. The chances of that happening had been about the same as winning the lottery and being struck by lightning twice in the same day and then getting into a plane crash. Still, it had happened, and Stan's only child was on its way into the world its father had abandoned.

"Push, Mrs. Marsh," the doctor said, staring into her traumatized vagina. "One more push should do it."

She screamed and pushed with everything within her. It felt like her entire lower half was being torn apart, and the pain was unspeakable. She swore if she died during childbirth from the pain, she would hunt Stan down in the pits of hell and stomp his burning testicles with stilettos.

There was a feeling of sliding, then the doctor was holding a small, bloody baby in his arms. They slapped it on its little pink ass until it cried, then cleaned it up and wrapped it in a blanket and handed it to her. It was a boy.

"Stanley Marsh, JR," she said. "His name is Stanley, after his father."

She held him in her arms and loved him immediately. He had black hair like his father, and had some of her facial features. He was her whole life from the instant she looked into his eyes, which were green for some reason.

_How did that happen?_

* * *

When Stan died, he found himself not in the burning pits of hell as he had expected, but rather at the bus stop he had always stood at with his friends. He looked down at himself. He was eight years old again, or at least in his eight year old body.

"Hey, Stan," a familiar voice said.

Stan looked over and saw eight-year old Kyle standing there, smiling at him. Stan's mouth dropped in shock. He couldn't believe his eyes.

"Kyle!" he cried, running to him and throwing his arms around him. "I never thought I'd see you again."

"Likewise," Kyle said, smiling at him.

"How is this even possible?" Stan asked.

"Well," Kyle said, "it's kind of hard to explain. I think our Creator has more mercy on us than the church people give Him credit for."

"Amazing," Stan said.

"Stan," Kyle said, taking him by the hands, "I know you were distraught, especially after you read my suicide note, but you shouldn't have killed yourself. I was never worth taking your own life. It's not that I don't appreciate it, but you had a whole life ahead of you."

"I just... didn't know what else to do," Stan said, hanging his head. "I felt so..."

"Ssshhh," Kyle said, raising his face up with his index finger. "It's okay."

He came to him then and they kissed. Stan felt that for the first time in his existence, he was doing exactly what his soul had cried out for him to do from the beginning. He was in harmony with his soul mate at last. They fell into the snow then, and Stan's world went into a blur of emotion and happiness. He knew at some point during the next three days they explored each other. Shortly after, he's pretty sure they made love.

They existed in pure bliss during this time, enjoying their eternity together. Each day, they wandered and explored and played in the world they had known as children, quite often holding hands. Each day, no matter where they chose to lay down and rest (which they only did to put on the pretense that they were actually living in the town of South Park as children, and not living it up in their own personal heaven), they would always wake up once again at the bus stop.

At one point, after the cancer finally took him, Cartman joined them. He and Kyle were on much better terms in the afterlife, and even seemed to care about each other very much. Kyle found out about the letter he had never been sent, and that Cartman had come to his funeral, and could not find it in himself to hold a grudge against him any longer. They were all so happy in this little slice of paradise designed just for them. From time to time Kenny would show up at times between one of his gruesome deaths and when he reappeared on Earth. This would make their world complete, and they always begged him to stay, but he never did. He always told them he wanted to try to make at least 75 before he hung it up.

One day, Kyle came to Stan and sat him down on the old log by Stark's Pond. He took him by the hans as he had done the first day and looked into his eyes.

"Stan," he said, "I have something to tell you."

"What?" Stan asked. "You make it sound so serious, as if anything bad could happen here."

"Well, it could be bad depending on your point of view," Kyle replied.

"What do you mean?"

"They're, um, sending me back," Kyle explained.

"Back? You mean like Kenny?"

"Not exactly. Kenny just sort of reappears somewhere after he dies. They're sending me back to be reborn."

"Reborn?" Stan cried. "But why? I mean, how long will you be gone?"

"Well," Kyle said, biting his lip and looking away, "they asked me if I wanted to go back. They said there's a lonely expectant mother down there who needs me to look after her. I told them I would."

"What?" Stan moaned, almost on the verge of tears. "Why would you do that? Why would you leave me? We have been so happy, I-"

"Stan, it's Wendy."

"What?" Stan replied, shocked. "What's happening with Wendy?"

"She's having your baby," Kyle told him. "Shortly before you died, you got her pregnant. They want me to be her son."

Stan couldn't believe his ears. He had thought they were finally going to be happy together forever, in a place where they were free to be themselves. There was no confusion here, no sadness, no bad dreams or memories. There was just the two of them. He didn't understand why Kyle wanted to give all of that up, and told him so.

"Frankly, it's because I think it would be an honor to go and be your son," Kyle said. "To inhabit the body that you created with Wendy despite all odds. Plus, she's in a really bad place. She didn't expect you to kill yourself, and she's been all alone through the pregnancy. She needs me, Stan."

"But I don't want you to go," Stan cried, letting the tears flow down his face. "We were so happy."

"And I'll be back," Kyle said. "Human life passes by in a heartbeat here. You'll hardly have time at all to miss me."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

* * *

Wendy raised young Stanley on her own. She never took another man, never married, never even dated. She was an independent widow who considered her dead husband to be the only man she would ever love. As the years went by and their son got older, she began to see so much of Stan in him. He had his father's heart, his kindness, his generosity. He even did that thing where he pinched the bridge of his nose, though Wendy had no idea where he'd picked it up. She had certainly never done it.

She also saw other things in him, too, and she wasn't sure what to make of it. Those green eyes... they were Kyle's eyes. The boy also had Kyle's laughter and his fiery personality. When he was ten, he asked if he could convert to Judaism and have a Bar Mitzvah when he turned thirteen. Wendy tried to ignore these things, tried to tell herself it was all a coincidence, but the way the kid looked at her sometimes... she had only seen one other person in her life ever make the kind of facial expressions her child was making. He was exhibiting more and more Kyle-like attributes every day.

The clencher for her was when she decided to test her theory one day. She had heard that you can speak directly to a person's soul when they are sleeping, that the person's body is essentially just short of dead and that the person's eternal spirit is actually in control. She knelt down next to her son, asleep in his Terrance and Phillip bed, and whispered to him.

"Kyle, is that you?"

The boy didn't rouse from his sleep, but the slightest little smile crept across his face.

03/15/2014 - 04/20/2014


End file.
